Torrington
by The Alien of Pluto
Summary: Danny Fenton isn't getting any younger, but he isn't exactly getting older either. He thought a new environment with a new school, new faces, and no ghosts might give him time to sort this through. Of course, the universe isn't that nice. He gets aliens instead. And then some ghosts. One ghost. With a particular hate for still-living humans. Which his new friends happen to be.
1. Chapter 1

_DP _

-After high school Team Phantom split, keeping in contact through email and the occasional phone conversation. Three years later, after seeing a picture of Sam on television, Danny realizes just how much he hasn't aged. Rattled by this new revelation, Danny decides he needs some breathing room. He transfers schools hoping for a fresh start and to cover the fact that he's not aging. _'Phantom Planet' did not happen._

_MM_

-M.O.M. sends Martin and Diana to investigate mysterious disappearances near the Torrington area. Witnesses report seeing swirling green light and blinding flashes. No other evidence has been recovered. The people just vanish into thin air. Their only lead is the mysterious glowing figure Martin sees flying over them as they investigate._ The events of 'It's Alive' never happened._

* * *

Daniel Fenton stood frozen in the middle of his empty college dorm room. Several dirty shirts and one or two pairs of pants lay balled up under his feet, one of the belt's buckle was digging painfully into his heel but he paid no mind. His blue eyes remained fixed on the television screen, his expression one of pained incredulity.

The date flashed through his mind, his brain doing some quick double-checking. Yes, he'd known the date. Always knew the date, but…

The black haired boy couldn't believe his eyes, or the little text box floating across the bottom of the screen. Couldn't believe it was really her. So he stayed frozen as he was, a square of metal digging into his foot, standing in the middle of the room, and listened.

The news lady was standing beside her van, a large, white vehicle with a huge '97' painted on the side. She was wearing a light grey suit and calf-length boots, and big, dangly earrings that contrasted oddly with her current setting.

The woman smiled cheerily, holding a microphone to her cherry-painted lips, and brushing wavy blonde hair behind her ears. She was saying in a strained-happy voice,

"I'm Patricia Sands of 97 News, the state's best source of political controversy. Behind me is the Shawnee National Forest where a large crowd of angry naturalists has gathered to protest the clear cutting scheduled to begin early next week. With me is twenty-one year old Samantha Manson, the leader and organizing force behind-"

Oh no! Oh no, no, no!

Danny whipped his head around, eyes fixing on the reflection of himself in the mirror on the wall. He looked…the same. He turned around to look at Sam again, then back at the image of his seventeen year old face screwed up in agony.

Two bright white rings burst to life around his waist and traveled the length of his small frame. Even as he watched, his blue eyes became green, his black hair white. His baggy jeans and t-shirt were replaced by a black hazmat jumpsuit with white accents and a funky white D on his chest. Danny Phantom quickly turned intangible and flew up through the dorm's ceiling, leaving the TV on and the empty, messy room behind.

He came to rest on the roof of the building, sitting with his hands in his lap, his feet dangling over the side of the brick structure. He stared absently into the twilight-dark sky, concentrated inward at the raging hurricane in his mind.

He'd had nightmares about this, about his ghost half slowing his aging, but they were only nightmares. Danny knew that he was a lot smaller than the other guys at the college, and that he didn't look anywhere near as mature as they did, but seeing Sam again really brought it into a new light.

He wasn't aging.

He was still 17.

Danny's breath hitched in his throat, and he found himself threatening to hyperventilate. He needed to get away, really get away. He needed a place where no one knew him, where Danny Phantom was just a whisper and where Danny Fenton didn't exist.

He'd come back and settle everything out later, but right now, he needed a break. He needed a break and some breathing room, somewhere to calm down and organize his chaotic mind.

Somewhere…quiet and close. A place where nothing _too_ bad ever seemed to happen…a place that always seemed to get left out of horror movies…

It was a stretch and he knew it, but Danny came to a decision.

He was going to Canada.

* * *

_**No promises on updates, just saying now. Exams are in two weeks so this is a stupid idea to start writing now but 'meh.**_

_**Yes, my summary sucks, I know. And as soon as I can find a better title, I'll probably change it.**_

_***Sigh* but the only people who'd even find this are people who have me on author watch, and then the odd one or two like DP or MM.**_

_**That's why I'm writing this for me! Yay me! ;P**_


	2. Chapter 2

_**Parc la Fontaine, Sherbrooke, Quebec- 04:00 am**_

He breathed deep, savoring the smell of gasoline and wood chips in the morning. Especially the smell of freshly cut, illegally obtained, government protected wood (in the morning). Sure, people would notice the little clear-cut patch in the center of Parc la Fontaine eventually but by that time he and his crew would be long gone.

Roy Brown chuckled to himself as he paced one end of the clearing, his eyes wandering among the men and saws, inspecting. Yes, permits for cutting took time, and time meant money. Money was the one thing Brown really cared about, he wasn't going to let some trifle legality slow him down. Speaking of time…he shook back his coat sleeve and took a quick glance at his rather ugly, but expensive watch.

4:16 am.

"All right, boys," Brown shouted, his breath fogging in the chilly November air, "time to pack 'er up!"

His men were efficient, and they'd be clear of the Parc before even the earliest joggers had had a chance to switch off their alarm clocks. Brown signaled several of the trucks to get moving, before joining a group of well-muscled men in packing away the saws.

"Good haul today, boss," one of them grinned, his weathered face crinkling as his lips curled up.

"No doubt about it," Brown returned, securing a thick chain to the truck bed. Then he motioned for the rest of them to get on the truck. He had his own car, and he wanted to make sure nothing had been left behind but white, sappy tree trunks.

Turning back to the clearing as the last man climbed into the truck's cab, Brown saw something shimmering in one of the oozing trunks. Frowning, he started forward, watching the glowing wisp dance back and forth along the rings of the stump. He bent down to examine it closer, his knees cracking, as the last truck started up. Brown was in danger of being hypnotized by the wisp, the tiny blue tendril waving gently back and forth without a care in the world. It rose up suddenly.

Several human screams and the shrieks of tearing metal rent the still morning air as violently bright light filled the clearing. When the light dimmed the clearing was empty, the only evidence of violence the torn back end of the truck and a single hard hat, spinning in place on the wet grass.

_**Torrington Academy, Sherbrooke, Quebec- 17:50 pm **_

"Hmm…"

Seventeen year old Martin Mystery put his pen to his lips, tapping the end against his skin as he thought. He was sitting against one of the trees in his school's courtyard, a miniature car on the grass beside him, a notebook on his knees, trying to think of what to write.

A black, long sleeve shirt covered his lightly toned arms and chest and a red and yellow t-shirt, open down the middle, covered that in turn. Grey pants hung loose around his legs, and red and white sneakers sheathed his feet. His hair was up in a signature spiky sort of wave as he paused to scratch his head, pen still in hand.

"Ah-ha!" Martin scribbled furiously on the sheet of paper, reading his words aloud as he wrote them down, "Has…anyone…ever…told you…how…beautiful…you look…sil-hou-etted…against…the sun?"

He gave the note a cursory glance before nodding, satisfied, and tearing the page from the rest of the book. Then he picked up the cat-sized car and fastened the folded sheet of paper to the top. He whipped a remote control out of his pocket and extended the antenna as he peeked around the bushes surrounding him, searching for his prey.

Spotting her, he flashed a triumphant little smirk into thin air and pressed the tiny gas button, driving the car forward. The RC burst through the bushes dramatically and zoomed across the pavement, winding around strutting pigeons and smushing unsuspecting bugs, homing in on its quarry until it crashed, also dramatically, into another's foot.

"Yow!" the girl cried, grabbing her throbbing foot and hopping around on one leg, glaring at the small car. She froze, awkwardly, when she noticed the folded paper attached to its hood, then touched her foot gingerly to the pavement and plucked note off the plastic. Her eyes scanned the messy scrawling, her lips mouthing, "My dearest Jenny…" and her glare deepening until she looked up and her sight zeroed in with uncanny precision on Martin's hiding place.

In almost no time at all his stepsister was looming over him, the paper crumpled in one fist, both hands on her hips. She was dressed in her usual two-tones-of-purple long sleeve shirt, and blue capris, with purple and white sneakers. Her long brown hair, held back slightly by a green clip, dangled past her face as she stared down at him.

"Another girl-catching scheme, Martin?" she asked quietly, dangerously.

"Yup," he said smugly, "and it was going fine until you stepped on my car. Jenny would've-"

SMACK!

Diana's hand connected with a spectacular show of force on his cheek; his head whipped sideways and he was pushed over, landing other-cheek-first on the ground.

"You were the one who hit me! And you're delusional if you think this is going to make Jenny go out with you! This is the cheesiest thing you've come up with yet!"

"Huh. It's not cheesy," he replied indignantly, sitting up and rubbing his smarting face, "and Jenny would totally go out with me!"

"She wouldn't go out with you if you were the last two people on Earth!"

"Wanna bet?" Martin scrambled to his feet, staring his step-sister in the eye.

"Oh-ho, yeah," Diana replied smoothly, straightening to her fullest. She stuck out a hand for him to shake, saying, "But no date by the end of the week means you're stuck doing all your own homework for the next month."

"Fine," Martin replied, his bottom lip jutting out as he took her hand and shook, "now,"

he stepped out of the bushes and started around Diana, "if you'll excuse me, Jenny has- oops!"

Martin stumbled back as several books hit the pavement and the person he'd collided with did the same. Diana rushed forward, diving down to help pick up the school-issued texts while Martin extended a hand to help the other to their feet.

"Are you alright?" she asked as she too straightened up, holding out the books.

Then she got a good look at this other person: adorably messed up black hair above a pale face with gorgeous blue eyes. He wore a simple white t-shirt despite the cold, with red accents and a red oval in the center, blue jeans, and red and white sneakers. She blushed furiously when he smiled, said "yeah, thanks," and took his books back.

"I-I'm Diana," she gushed, "Are you new here? You need help getting somewhere? I can help you find your room, uh, that is, if you haven't already, I mean-"

"Excuse her," Martin interrupted, shoving Diana aside, "I'm Martin Mystery, and that spaz over there is my step-sister Diana Lombard. So, do you need help finding your room? It's the least I can do for running into you." He gestured to the suitcase and backpack the guy was carrying.

"Thanks, that'd be awesome. I'm Danny, by the way."

"It's a pleasure," Diana assured, popping up beside her step-brother and blinking metaphorical hearts at the new boy.

"So, what's your room number," Martin asked as all three started forward, Diana trailing along, staring after Danny.

"Uh," Danny glanced down at a folded sheet of paper clutched in his fist between the straps of his backpack, "270."

"Awesome! That's right across from me! C'mon!" Martin bounded off.

Danny smiled weakly at his excitement, picking up the pace as they came to the school's main flight of stairs. Jogging the first few steps, he turned back to look at Diana,

"He always this happy?"

"Uh-huh," she nodded dumbly, hardly blinking, her cheeks still slightly red.

Danny frowned and turned back, hurrying to catch up with Martin. When they reached the end of a long hallway in the west end of the school, Martin finally stopped. He swung around and gestured to the last door on the left side of the hallway.

"Here we are."

Danny dropped his backpack to the polished wooden floor, pulled a tiny golden key from his pocket, and unlocked the door. Then, picking up his bag, he elbowed his way into the room, looking around curiously. After a moment, he dropped his bag on the short bed and rested his suitcase beside it, before noticing Martin and Diana hovering near the door.

"You can come in," he told them, smiling, laughing with his eyes.

The two walked in, leaving the door open behind them. The room looked like every other room in Torrington: a single bed, giant windows, adjoining bathroom, and basic furniture.

"It's nice," Danny commented, "better than my last school; communal bathroom. Still, it could use some decoration."

He unzipped a pocket on his suitcase, pulled out a poster blueprint of a space shuttle with the words, "Explorer Hartman," in bold letters across the top. As he removed the folded poster, the movement dislodged something from his bag, and it rolled across the bed to where Diana was making herself comfortable. She picked up the silver and green thermos, turning it over in her hands.

"You know there's a cafeteria here right?" she asked.

"Yeah," Danny turned to look at the girl, wondering where that question had come from, "why-? Hey!" he grabbed the Thermos out of her hands, "Be careful with that!"

"Sorry," Diana looked shocked at how angry and nervous he seemed. It was just a thermos. "It just fell out."

Danny sighed, and seemed to deflate slightly, "No, I'm sorry for snapping at you. It's just, this Thermos is…special, and…delicate."

He set it carefully on a shelf at the end of the bed. Martin and Diana shared a look behind his back.

"Uh, we should get going. Let you pack, and all that. So, see ya 'round?" Martin called as he and Diana backed toward the door.

Martin shut it gently on Danny's "yeah, sure," and turned to his step-sister. He raised his eyebrows as they slipped into Martin's room across the hall.

"Little over-protective, huh?" he said, falling back onto the rolling chair by his desk, nodding his head in the direction of Danny's room.

Diana, standing near the door, shrugged, "Maybe a relative gave it to him before they died? Or a friend?"

"Huh," Martin's face lit up, and he sat up straighter, "maybe that friend didn't want to leave, and he keeps their spirit trapped in there! Like a djinn, only better!"

"Martin! That's terrible. Don't you dare ask him about it!"

"Pff," Martin put a hand over his heart, feigning being shot, "you really think I'd do something like that?"

Diana shot him a cold, hard glare, "Yes, I would. Now come on, we have classes tomorrow, and it's getting late."

She left Martin to his devices, and headed out into the hall. For a second, she debated going over to wish Danny a good night, but on second thought, she decided against it. All of sudden, the hallway seemed to get very cold. Shivering, Diana hurried off to her own room, forcing her thoughts to the next day, wondering what classes Danny had, and if they shared any.

* * *

**_So, in the show, the dorm room doors don't actually have numbers on them. And I realize that they probably go alphabetically, and I'm sure that I could make that work, F and M, but unless you want me to sit you down and map it out for you, please just accept it. _**

**_Well, chapter one. No more describing clothes for me from on. I hate it. And just like in the episodes, they don't really change clothes :D_**

**_So it has come to my attention that Roy Brown is an actual person. (Thanks Evil Squid!) He was a Canadian pilot who is claimed to have shot down the Red Baron. So, wow, that's twice. You see in my HP fanfic (which isn't very good, don't read it), 'Next Generation,' I created an OC and named him Eric Blair. Well, no problems there right? Nope, just that later that year my class read 'Animal Farm,' and guess who the author is? Eric Blair! Way to go subconscious, huh? ;D _**

**_Anyway, thank you people who reviewed/favourited/or just plain read the story! It's so awesome that so many people want to read this. Hopefully this doesn't change._**


	3. Chapter 3

_**Torrington Academy, Sherbrooke, Quebec- 05:00 am**_

He was woken up the next day to someone knocking on his door.

Lying on his stomach, Danny opened one bleary eye, and lifted his head just enough to see the door. When the knock came again, he let his head drop, and slid his gaze over to his alarm clock.

He groaned, clapping a hand to his forehead as he slowly forced himself into a sitting position. Years of ghost hunting and surprise night time attacks had conditioned him to accept only a few hours of sleep; five was okay, three not so much.

Okay, so it was all his fault, exploring the school, seeking out ectoplasmic hotspots, somewhere to hide the Thermos, but he hadn't expected to be woken up this early.

Shuffling groggily to the door of his new room, stifling a yawn, Danny pulled the door open to reveal a tall man with dark grey hair, a lighter stripe running along the back of his head, and large square glasses. He smiled down kindly at the younger man.

"Sorry to disturb you so early Mr. Fenton. If you could get dressed, I need to see you in my office before classes start."

"Of course, Principal Pebbleton," Danny returned his smile half-heartedly. What was so important that he needed to be woken up this unnecessarily early?

Danny closed his door again as the principal stepped back to wait for him, and shuffled over to the suitcase he'd thrown just inside the closet. Pulling off his pajamas, he changed into his standard t-shirt and jeans, and slipped into his shoes. Hurriedly he dragged a brush across his teeth, splashed water on his face in an attempt to completely wake up, and ran a hand through his messy hair before darting back to the door. He stepped into the hallway and Pebbleton set off for his office, Danny trailing behind.

He watched the older man carefully as they walked, trying to think of a reason the principal would need to see him. He'd filled out all the paperwork yesterday, forging only what he'd needed to…unless he'd forgotten something? Danny hurried to catch up, trotting along beside the man.

"Not to worry Mr. Fenton, just a small matter. It shouldn't take too long to sort out." Pebbleton held open the door to his office, gesturing for Danny to go in first. He did, looking around at the spacious office he'd seen only yesterday, and sat in the same seat as yesterday too. His eyes followed the principal as the man walked across the room and sat down behind his desk, pulling a sheaf of papers toward him. Then he fixed Danny in a cold stare.

"Just a small matter," he repeated, opening the file folder, "Now, I have here a graduation diploma from a Casper High School down in the States. Looking at the dates and doing a few quick calculations," he said somewhat sarcastically, "that was three years ago. Which would put you at age twenty-one, yet you wrote down that you were only seventeen…care to explain this little problem?"

What! Guess he did miss something. In overshadowing the computer to change the dates on his birth certificate and any record of his going to college, he'd missed high school records somehow.

"Um," How did one get out of something like this, he wondered. Ah, forget it, it had worked once.

Danny went ghost in a blinding flash of light and slipped intangibly into Pebbleton before the man had more than a chance to flinch. Looking through suddenly nearsighted eyes at the graduation diploma he focused on a date three years later than the one written down and said aloud to the empty office,

"Whoops, never mind, must have been a mistake of the school's. I'll update the file for you, Mr. Fenton. You can go now."

Danny phased out again, changing back to human, while Pebbleton shook his head dazedly, a new, albeit blurry, memory imprinted in his mind.

"See ya, Principal Pebbleton!" Danny called with a wave as he slipped out the door.

Pebbleton raised his hand in return, looking highly disorientated.

Out in the hallway, Danny breathed a sigh of relief and disappointment. The last was directed at himself, at the use of his powers first. He should have at least tried to think of an excuse. But his sleep deprived brain had just shorted out, leaving his mind blank.

But what's done is done and there was nothing he could do about it now. He headed back to his room to pick up his backpack and books before he thought about breakfast. It was his first day of school, again…

How many times would he have to go through this? If he lived forever - no, he wouldn't- couldn't think of that. Vlad had gotten older, and so would he. But then he'd been hit by a blast from a prototype portal, and Danny's portal had been perfected. Would that make a difference?

He'd arrived at his dorm room. Not bothering to open the door but just phasing through, Danny sunk into his bed, and put his head in his hands.

He'd come to Torrington so he wouldn't have to think of the consequences of gaining ghost powers, and now he was brooding. His eyes slid upwards to the ceiling panel behind which hid a highly dented Fenton Thermos, and for a second he seriously considered asking his 'jerky older self' his opinion on immortality.

He shook that thought pretty quickly and decided being locked in his room probably wasn't the best place to be at the moment. Standing, he grabbed his backpack, jammed a pile of books into it and left. He met Diana on the other side of the door, her fist raised to hammer on Martin's.

"Hi," he greeted, slipping into the false-happy mood he'd used to hide ghost-induced injuries from his friends and parents.

"Oh! Hey!" Diana spun around, smiling too wide and whipping her hand behind her back, "Did I wake you?"

This time his humor was genuine, "You haven't started knocking yet," he pointed out.

"I haven't? Oh, heh-heh."

Danny's good mood faded fast. He recognized the symptoms: she was crushing. On him. Great, one more problem he needed to sort out. He hadn't dated much, once or twice, it wasn't for him. And it wasn't as if he saw much of Sam anymore. What were the chances that she was free too? Was it wrong to still like someone you hardly talked to except through email? Should he move on and-

That was the second time today someone knocking had woken him up. Diana had started pounding on Martin's door, shouting through the thin wood for him to get his lazy butt out of bed.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," the blond moaned, pulling open the door, "What's the big rush?" he asked, scratching his pink, footy pajama covered chest.

"The big rush? School! C'mon Martin, you've missed so many classes I'm surprised they haven't thrown you out yet!"

"Nice PJs, Martin," Danny cut in. A tiny, sarcastic curl crept up his lips as he slipped farther into his 'everything's perfect mode.'

"Hmm? Ah!" Martin seemed to remember what he was wearing because he abruptly slammed the door. Danny and Diana heard him rushing around, followed by several muffled thuds and a pained exclamation, before the door opened again and Martin stepped out fully dressed in his grey jeans and yellow and red over-shirt.

"All right I'm ready, we can stop making fun of Martin now. So, who's up for some breakfast?"

"I'm not that hungry right now." Dwelling on your possible immortality and then realizing you're making more friends you'll have to leave can do that to you. Danny hefted his backpack farther up his shoulder, "I'm just going to find my first class."

"Was it something I said?" Martin closed his door behind him, sweat-dropping as the siblings watched him leave.

"It's always something you say, Martin." Diana stared at Danny's retreating back, "Actually, I'm not very hungry either. I'm gonna go see what's wrong."

She ran off, leaving Martin alone in front of his room.

"Fine, whatever," he pouted, stalking off toward the cafeteria, "I'll just eat alone."

Diana jogged up to Danny, peering nervously at his blank face before asking if he was alright.

"I'm fine," he sighed, "just nervous about the first day of school, and a little tired."

"Aw, don't worry about class. Everyone here's pretty cool, there's not a lot of bullying that goes on, especially now that Java's part time hall monitor."

"Java?" Danny looked sideways at her.

"He's a friend of mine and Martin's. I'll introduce you at lunch, if you want. He's a sweetheart, but he sometimes has a hard time accepting modern customs."

"Modern?" Danny raised an eyebrow, grinning at Diana, "you make it sound like he's a caveman or something."

"Eh-heh, caveman, yeah. So what classes do you have?"

So much for a joke, Danny thought, she changed the subject. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. He let the backpack slip from his shoulder, and started rooting through it for the scrap of paper that held his schedule. He finally found it folded between a history textbook and a blank notebook.

"Uh," he scanned sheet, "World History with Mr. Ericson."

Diana's face lit up, "Oh! Me too! This is great! I mean," she rethought quickly; "you won't have to be in class alone, at least you'll know someone. And Martin has that class too, although I could do without him."

Danny chuckled, "If he annoys you that much, how come you hang out with him?"

She didn't have a good answer for that one. Because they were brother and sister probably, and deep down she honestly cared for him. Something like that, anyway.

"I dunno. Oh, hey, this way," she tugged his sleeve in another direction and led him down a side hallway.

"I guess it's a brother-sister thing," Diana continued. "So, do you have any siblings?"

Danny seemed to freeze for the smallest of seconds, and if she hadn't been paying so much attention to him, Diana might have missed it.

Should he tell her? Why wouldn't he? Danny didn't exactly know why he felt like keeping Jazz a secret, he just wanted to keep Diana and Martin at arm's length for the time being. And if that meant lying about some things then so be it.

"Nah, only child. Is this the room?" he checked his schedule again with the number above the door before walking in.

"You know, we're a bit early," Diana said, pausing in the doorway. Was it him, or did her voice seem suddenly guarded?

Danny shrugged, "I just want to get settled before everyone else rushes in. If you want to run and get some breakfast, I won't hold it against you." He smiled at her.

"No, I'm fine," Diana watched as he looked around, then walked over and dropped his backpack into the last seat in the front row, nearest the window. She followed after a second, claiming the seat next to him, and withdrawing a writing pad from her ever present, purple purse.

"Diana," a gruff, male voice greeted as a brown haired, bespectacled man walked into the room, cup of coffee in hand, "and, oh? Who's this?"

Danny stood up quickly, "Danny Fenton. You must be Mr. Ericson?"

Mr. Ericson strolled over, and held out a hand for Danny to shake.

"Welcome to Torrington, Danny Fenton," the man smiled, "ever taken World History before?"

Yes, in high school, and his first college but he was supposed to be only 17 years old.

"Not really, a little in middle school. So how's the course?"

Ericson laughed, "I think Diana would be a better judge of that then me!"

The bell rang before Diana could respond, and Ericson headed over to his desk as students began to file in. Martin joined them before the seat could be taken, and then class started.

Danny doodled.

By the end of the lecture he'd learned nothing he hadn't heard before. Most of it he'd learned from Clockwork, the ghost Master of Time, but if you knew something, you knew something. At least by going over the same classes again he could raise his marks that didn't exist.

He fiddled through the rest of his classes until lunch time, using the 'free' time to think over the whole immortality problem. By lunch he was feeling strangely better and worse at the same time. He'd had a chance to think it through, to confront this thing head on, but he'd also made a mental list of things he'd have to give up.

Danny met Martin and his step-sister at the school's main entrance and they led the way to the cafeteria.

"So how have your classes been so far, Danny?" Diana politely asked, as he fell into step with them.

He shrugged, "It's class, what can I say? But no one's bothered me yet, so not too bad."

Diana frowned, and was about to ask if he'd ever been bullied before but Martin interrupted, "C'mon Di, he doesn't wanna talk about _class_. Hey, Danny, let's get some food, and I'll introduce you to Java. He's serving dessert today," Martin wriggled his eyebrows conspiratorially.

"Right," Danny agreed, smiling and letting the overly cheerful blonde pull him into the lineup. Diana moved in behind him, rolling her eyes.

They worked their way through the line slowly, picking up more junk food than fruits or vegetables, until they got to the last counter. That's when Danny noticed Java.

Wow, that man was huge! He was as close to Danny's father as he'd ever seen, although built more in muscle than Jack Fenton ever was, and thinner too.

Martin and Danny scooted along the line, "Java, I want you to meet someone!"

Martin gestured happily to the boy behind him, "Java, meet Danny. Danny, Java."

The big man's eyes went round as disks as he saw Martin's new friend, and he jumped backwards with a frightened yell.

"Java!" Diana shouted, running around the counter and laying a comforting hand on the man's shoulder as he cowered in the kitchen corner.

"No hurt Java!" he was shouting, as Danny stood frozen in shock, still clutching his lunch tray, "You no hurt Java! Please go 'way."

Danny dropped his tray, not caring that slipped off the counter and crashed to the tile floor, spilling food all over. He walked as fast as he could without running out of the cafeteria, down the hall, and out of the school.

Why did that man, Java, freak out like that? Danny had never seen him before, let alone done something that would incite that kind of reaction.

He stopped by the fountain, plopping down on to one of the wooden benches and crossing his arms over his chest.

Maybe it was a ghost thing. What if this Java could sense ghosts? But that brought up the question of why he hadn't just shouted 'Ghost!' and been done with it. Add one _more _problem to the list.

He glanced over as Martin ran up, slightly out of breath.

"What happened in there?" the other asked, standing by the end of the bench.

"I don't know," Danny answered, looking up at him, "Maybe it was a stranger thing. Diana said he had a hard time with some stuff."

Martin shrugged, "I've never seen him freak out like that before though. Where are you from?"

"The States," Danny answered vaguely, sinking deeper into the bench. Great so this hadn't ever happened before, woo hoo for the half-ghost.

"Huh, maybe it's just some cologne you've been wearing. Anyway, here, I brought you a sandwich. I'm gonna go help Di calm Java down, if that's okay with you."

"Yeah, sure. I don't mind." More time to his thoughts.

Danny ripped the plastic wrap off the ham and cheese sandwich and took a tentative bite. Not his favourite, but he hadn't eaten all day. He ate half, and then went to find his next class.

The rest of the afternoon passed quickly in sort of a blur, and by actually concentrating on the teacher's lectures instead of his problems Danny managed to get his mind to a happier state than it had been in lately. He laughed with Martin as they came out of the last class of the day together.

"What's the bet that I can beat you in Zombie Invasion Force?"

"Video games?" Danny smirked, "Ha, I'm undefeated!"

"Race you there then!" Martin shoved him sideways and took off running across campus toward the dorms, laughing insanely.

"He wants to play dirty, fine." Danny ran after him, hardly having to use ghost speed to catch up. He matched Martin's pace and smiled sideways at him. "C'mon slow poke!"

They rounded a corner of the school and nearly collided with a girl walking along the path. Danny turned his arm intangible to avoid spinning himself and one of the girls to the ground as he skidded to a stop, "Oops, sorry! Diana?"

"Danny? Martin? What were you two doing? You could have hurt someone!"

"Oh, chill out Di, we didn't. We were just racing, y'know," Martin nudged her, "having fun."

Danny smiled from the sidelines as Diana blew up at her brother; he could easily picture them as chibi cartoon characters curb stomping one other, but he'd have to watch her anger. She could flare up as easy as Sam.

"Hey, c'mon Diana," he cut in when he started fearing for Martin's health, "Sorry I almost hit you. I was just an accident."

"That's okay, Danny. I don't blame you." She was abruptly happy, turning from the battered Martin to blink dreamily at him.

"Huh," Martin picked himself gingerly off the ground, glaring daggers at his step-sister, "you never forgive _me_ that easily."

"That's because you never mean it," she growled at him.

Everyone froze when the thick green watch on Martin's wrist started beeping. He and Diana shared a look, glancing at Danny who just stood there, waiting.

"Uh," Diana thought fast, "oh! Martin, that's right. We have an appointment with our, um, guidance counselor! Sorry to leave you Danny, catch you in the morning?"

He stood stunned for a moment as Diana pulled her brother into a run and they disappeared. That was…kind of familiar, somehow. Like déjà vu.

"Hey, Martin!" Danny took off after them, hoping to ask for a comic or something, but when he rounded the corner the yard was empty. Funny, they couldn't have run that fast.

A faintly blue light in the corner of his eye caught his attention. Danny turned and headed for a bush near the fountain where the light seemed to be coming from. But when he blinked the light was gone, and the bush seemed normal. Huh.

Now he was suspicious; after all, he was no stranger to mysterious flashes of light and sudden, inexplicable disappearances. Was it coincidence that he'd made friends with other people just as adept at strangely disappearing as him?

Danny just hoped they weren't ghost hunters.

* * *

**_So, Mr. Ericson is real. Watch _The Body Swappers_. He hands out a pop quiz. And okay, I named him, and choose a class for him, but all I had was his appearence._**

**_You know how hard it is to pinpoint what classes these kids have, when? Seriously! I did my best. Not even sure if they'd be able to take World History but I wasn't offering_**

**_Geography. And I'm not sure how many classes they'd take a day. My school gives eight classes in two semesters, so we only have four classes at a time. Bit I know of others that have six a day and one semester all year. Meh. My story. Deal with it._**

**_And I realized while writing this that I really hate the word 'purple.' It's a stupid word. Pur-pull...ech._**

**_Guess what happens next chapter huh? Betcha can't do that? ;P_**

**_Let me know if anything's unclear by the way._**

**_Cheers!_**


	4. Chapter 4

_**The Centre- 6:00 pm **_

Diana clambered to her feet, brushing dirt off the knees of her pants. They put a portal in a shin-high rose bush, and expected her to crawl through it? Oh, how humiliating! Why couldn't they stick to random doors in the fountain or something less degrading?

Martin smirked, watching his step-sister, "Really, Di, after all the slime we've been through how can a little dirt bother you?"

Diana just seethed as the platform the two stood on began its usual trip across the Centre. They passed countless computer terminals and several working aliens, one of whom turned to watch them pass. Martin winked at the green skinned, blonde, fish-like woman who giggled and winked back.

A small mounted device rose out of the side of the platform, and with a whir, shot red beams across the agents, confirming their identities aloud in an automated female voice,

"_Martin Mystery: clear. Diana Lombard: clear."_

Martin looked over and noticed Diana staring back at the way they'd come. Her bottom lip jutted out slightly and she'd folded her arms across her chest. She looked worried.

"What's wrong D?"

She glanced at her brother as if to make sure he was being serious. "I just feel bad about leaving Danny, even to go on a mission. He didn't seem very happy."

"It's his first day of school, who would be?"

"No, I mean in general. I just get the feeling that he's acting sometimes."

Martin sighed, "You're reading into things, Di. He seems pretty normal to me. Except Java's reaction to him…wonder what that was all about."

"Yeah. Speaking of which, where is Java?" Diana looked around as if noticing his absence for the first time.

Martin shrugged as the platform came to rest at the bottom of a long, clear tube. "Where's Billy?" he asked in return as they stepped onto the gravity lift/ elevator.

The two rode in silence as the lift carried them up to their boss' office.

"Hey MOM," Martin called as he pushed through the large purple doors, "what's- _MOM_!"

Martin froze just inside the doorway, his stop so abrupt Diana smashed into his back and stumbled back a few steps.

"Martin! Watch it! What-?" Diana paused too at the unexpected sight inside the office.

MOM, the uptight, nearly emotionless head of the secret paranormal operation called the Centre was cradling Java to her chest. The big caveman was plopped on a round, leather pouffe next to a tall-backed red armchair upon which the Centre's head sat looking rather uncomfortable. She cleared her throat when she noticed the new arrivals and straightened up slightly but continued rubbing a circle on Java's back.

"Agents, would you care to enlighten me on why there is a caveman sobbing in my office?" MOM demanded in her usual monotone.

"Uh," Martin rubbed the back of his neck, confused, "we were kinda hoping you'd tell us."

There was a whir behind him, and Billy flew up in his little flying saucer, a steaming cup of tea clutched in his tiny green hands. He made his way over to the armchair,

"There, there, big guy," he said consolingly to Java, handing him the tea, "It's alright."

"Java?" Diana called softly, inching slowly closer, "What's wrong? What happened?"

"J-Java not want to go back to sch-school."

Martin joined the small group, bending down to be on eye level with his prehistoric friend, "What's up, big guy? I thought you liked Torrington?"

"Java s-scared," he fingered the rim of the teacup and leaned away from MOM who looked instantly relieved, "Java not want to go back."

"Why? What-? Oh," Diana met Martin's eyes before looking back at Java, "Is it because of Danny, Java? You're still upset about him?"

Java nodded slightly, widening his eyes. MOM, however, looked intrigued. She stood quickly and slipped around Java, coming around the little group to stand next to Martin.

"And who is this 'Danny?'" she demanded as Martin stood up.

"Well, he's a new student, he just transferred yesterday. He seems like a nice guy though; I don't what he could have done to make Java so scared."

"Hmm," MOM put a hand to her chin, looking thoughtful, "last name?"

"Fenton," Diana chimed in, continuing to pat Java comfortingly on the shoulder, though she was paying more attention to their conversation than cheering him up.

"I'll have Billy do a background check later. Now, your assignment…" she strode purposefully over to her desk and tapped a few buttons, bringing up a holographic map with two blinking red dots.

"Today you two will be investigating several disappearances in Sherbrooke. We-"

"Wait, Sherbrooke? As in Sherbrooke, Quebec? _Our _Sherbrooke?"

"Indeed. Now, we don't have much to go on with two reports and only one witness. The first report was from an early morning jogger named Mark Kaiden, who came across what appeared to be an illegal foresting job in Parc la Fontaine abandoned in a hurry. The second report was from the witness. Kelly Angerson claims that she was waiting for her father to pick her up when she heard him scream from down the road. She was then blinded by a sudden flash of light. The street was empty when she finally got her sight back."

"Ooh, sounds like alien abductions! Or maybe time travellers from the distant future coming back to do some tests on 'early humans!' Or maybe-"

"_**I think**_," MOM interrupted, "its time you left, Agent Mystery."

"Yeah," Diana grabbed the back of Martin's shirt, dragging him to the fluid blue portal Billy created for them, "none of us are really in the mood for 'One Thousand and One Ridiculous Theories.'"

MOM sighed as the two agents melted through the doorway and the portal shrunk to nothing; she turned to look at Billy, still trying to comfort Java who was refusing adamantly to return to the school. MOM sank heavily into the stiff chair at her desk. This was not going to be a fun day.

**0o0o**

Danny paced his room, wandering from the door to the window and back again.

He wasn't entirely sure Martin and Diana had just vanished. They could simply have run around a different corner before he'd got there, or taken a side door, or been blocked from view by one of several groups of kids wandering around campus.

What would it mean, anyway, if they had disappeared under impossible circumstances? Ghost hunters with advanced technology? But then they would have caught his signal and just blasted him… What if it wasn't ghost related at all? What would that make them then, to have that kind of tech?

He sighed, almost absently scanning the limited view outside his window.

A metallic rattle sounded from his bed, where sat a highly dented Thermos, twitching occasionally as he passed.

"_Your pacing is almost more annoying than Clockwork's. Why don't you _not_ tell me what's bothering you, and stop." _

The voice was more than familiar, being his and at the same time not, but it sent a thrill of unease through his entire being. Dan hadn't spoken to him in weeks, not since he'd visited Clockwork and explained his decision to run (temporarily) and that he'd wanted control of the Thermos that held his evil alter self. Dan had exploded, shouting angrily about torture, and ego, and sadism.

Now, the similarity in their voices just served to remind him that he was only three years away from being the same age as Dan, assuming, over course, that you didn't age when confined in a Fenton Thermos.

Danny flicked the ghost-containment device, scowling through it to the imagined visage of his alter self.

"_Hey! You've got your problem, I get it. But I've got mine too and you don't hear me complaining."_

"What, and the frustrated shouting and pointless denting isn't complaining?"

"_You _want _me to complain? Fine, I can do that. Let's see: I'm stuck in a miniaturized Hell, I'm stuck with you, my ears are still ringing with the sound of a thousand clocks, I'm back in school, I've got nothing to do but listen to you feel sorry for yourself-"_

Danny glared and grabbed the Thermos, willing his arm to become intangible, and shoving the battered device into thick headboard of his bed. Then he put a hand to his head, rolling his eyes, and transformed completely.

Jeans and t-shirt disappeared, black hair inverted, blue eyes changed. Phantom stared for a moment at the spot the Thermos was hidden, his mind back to the matter at hand.

He'd search the school first, make sure Martin and Diana were not where they said they'd be, and then he'd check the school grounds, then the surrounding village. If he didn't find them, he'd simply wait until the morning, or whenever they came back, and he'd watch them carefully.

He would find out what he might be up against.

**0o0o**

They'd searched the entire clearing, and found nothing… if you count nothing as being an overturned, warped, slightly burned truck frame, and lots of tree trunks.

Diana wandered among a stretch of sap sticky tree stumps, eyes roving, searching for anything out of the ordinary, while Martin combed the area around the truck, spewing out theories that got less enthusiastic as they got more practical.

Finally Diana saw something. She gasped and rushed forward, bending down in front of the stump to get a closer look. Near the base of the sawed off trunk was a pool of glowing green slime, a thin rivulet dribbling into it from the top of the trunk.

Guess this proved Martin's theory of spontaneous combustion wrong, but kind of creature left glowing slime?

"Hey, Martin/Diana! I found something!" she shouted at the same time her step brother did.

Diana stood up to see Martin running toward her, grinning like it was Christmas, and holding a charred hardhat in front of him.

"Look!" he gushed, shoving the yellow helmet into her face, "still think it wasn't aliens?"

Collected in the bottom, or well, top, of the hat was a slimy puddle of some ugly green-brown liquid.

"Eeuch! What _is_ that?" Diana jumped back, flapping her hands disgustedly in the direction of the hardhat.

Martin shrugged, swirling the goo around, "Not sure. I found it under the truck. I'll do a Slime Scan in a sec, but what did you find?"

"The usual slime," Diana said, bending back down to look closer at her find, "clear green. It looks like it came out of the tree. But it's definitely not sap."

"Hmm, it's cold." Martin leaned over, sticking his index finger into the goo and rubbing a drip between that and his thumb.

"Martin! Get that off, you don't know what it could do to you!"

"Hold your horses, Di, I'm fine," he straightened up, rubbing the slime off onto his pants. "Now, let's see what we're dealin' with."

"_U-Watch activated: Slime Scan selected."_ Martin grabbed the Scanner as it materialized above the Watch, looking as excited as ever to be wielding that kind of power. When the glow of the Watch faded Martin set the hardhat gently on the grass and removed the sampler, sticking it into the cleaner looking goo on the stump.

"_Sample is of unknown composition. Slime Scan inconclusive."_

Martin looked put out, scowling at the high-tech device like his best friend had just let him down. Diana however, gasped.

"Martin, remember the last time we got that result? In the Blackwater Lodge, the Slime Scan said the exact same thing!"

"Then you know what that means?" Martin squealed, beaming.

"Oh no…"

"We've got ghosts! Oh, this is so cool! We haven't had a real ghost in ages!"

Diana glared, both at her brother and at the reminder of that incident she'd spent most of in the control of a 100 year old dead guy," Yeah, yeah. Just Scan the other stuff and let's get out of here. It's freezing."

Martin smirked, "You scared of a little ole ghostie?"

Diana ignited, her face turning red, and slapped Martin across the cheek.

"Okay, okay," he grumbled from the ground, reaching over to dip the cleaned sampler into the helmet slime.

"_Sample is of unknown composition. Contains traces of human DNA. Slime Scan inconclusive."_

Diana stared at the ruddy green-brown goo with utter disgust, "So it's ghost residue with human blood in it? Ew…"

"Huh," Martin scrambled onto his knees, peering into the hardhat. He tipped the helmet toward him, squinting in the weakening sunlight. "Wasn't it more brown before?"

He and Diana stared at the slime and watched in amazement as the substance slowly turned more and more green, and the brown faded from it completely.

They were silent for a few moments, wondering at this new development.

Diana finally broke it. "Do another Slime Scan, Martin," she whispered.

"_Sample is of unknown composition, Slime Scan inconclusive."_

"No human DNA this time. Does that mean the blood died? Or the ectoplasm just overwhelmed it?"

"I don't know Martin, but let's get out of here. It's getting dark. C'mon, we still need to interview Kelly Angerson." Diana wrapped her arms around herself, nervously scanning the manmade clearing. Seeing the death of the blood, or whatever had happened, had really freaked her out. She wanted to leave _now_.

**0o**

Back in town, just a few streets out of Parc la Fontaine, Diana finally breathed again. Even out of the trees, it was still pretty dark, but she no longer felt the unnatural chill that had permeated the clearing.

"Kelly said she'd meet us outside a café just down the road from where her father disappeared." Diana said, looking around at the neon signs that lit up the street, "We should be just about…here we are."

They stopped under a thick blue awning at the stated meeting place just as a young girl, about sixteen, stepped out onto the sidewalk with a jingle of bells from the door.

"You are the agents from the Centre?" she asked carefully, in heavily accented English.

"I'm Martin Mystery, and this is my partner, Diana Lombard," Martin said in a deep voice, straightening to his full height, trying to look impressive as he held out his Centre badge.

"Oh, good. I am Kelly. I was afraid you were not coming." She flipped her long brown hair behind her ear, her blue eyes moving back and forth from Martin to Diana, "So…you would like to know what happened?

"Just tell us everything you remember," Diana said with an encouraging smile.

Kelly took a deep breath, "It was after school and I had been hanging out with some girlfriends, just walking and talking, you know? But it got really late and my friends headed back home. So I called my father to pick me up, I didn't want to walk all the way back. I waited right here for him. Eventually I heard his motorcycle, but it stopped at the bottom of the hill, so I thought he was waiting for me. I ran over but suddenly there was a light, and I couldn't see. It felt like someone had turned a spotlight on my eyes. I heard him scream but I couldn't do anything, I couldn't see." There were tears in Kelly's eyes, "When the lights faded and I could see again, he was gone, motorcycle and all!"

"Hmm," Martin put a hand to his chin, "could you show us exactly where you were standing when the light flashed?"

Kelly nodded, swiping at the tears on her face as she led them a few metres down the street. She pointed to the place the ground started to slope down, "Right here."

Martin zipped down the hill, peering around streetlights and a garbage can and into drains. Diana ignored him, turning to the girl who was breathing deep, calming breaths, "Was there anything else, Kelly? Did it get cold?"

The girl looked surprised, "Oui, for just a second. How did you know that?"

"Just a guess," Diana said her thoughts on the evidence they'd collected back in the Parc.

"Uh, so, what did your dad do? Is there any reason someone would want to…" she trailed off, not sure how to continue.

"My father was the head of a small mining company that was working in the Canadian Shield. It was his job to coordinate where the men would dig. He also funded a lot of the project."

Martin had bent down by the gutter, and Diana watched him uneasily. So whatever had attacked those men in the Parc had also taken Kelly's father apparently but why?

"Di," Martin had climbed the hill and stood joined their little group. He leaned in to his step-sister and whispered, "I found some more of that bloody ectoplasm. I sent a sample to Billy before it could change like the other one."

"Thanks for your help, Kelly," Diana said, facing the younger girl again, "we'll do everything we can to find your father."

"Thank you. I am glad I could help some."

"Wow…."

Diana glanced sideways at her brother. Martin was staring dazedly at Kelly.

"How 'bout we get some pizza together and you can go over what happened again," he suggested slowly.

"No thank you," Kelly said sweetly, with a small smile, "I should really be getting back home. My mother is worried enough about me already."

Kelly nodded at them and turned around, heading back down the road toward where they assumed her house was.

"Ha!" Diana laughed as soon as the girl was out of earshot, "Nice try Martin! You can't even get a sympathy date when you're the one doing the sympathizing!"

Martin pouted.

**0o0o**

Danny sighed, dropping altitude as he flew over the large city of Sherbrooke. This was pointless; he'd been searching for hours. He should fly right back to Torrington Academy and work on some of his first-day homework. But going back would mean exactly that, homework, and talking to Dan and losing out on finding who exactly Martin and Diana were. Still, how was he supposed to find two people who may or may not be in a place that he didn't know very well? It wasn't like they were going to be flashing a great neon sign that said, 'Hey Danny, over here!'

But then again…Danny paused as he caught a familiar flash of blue out of the corner of his eye. Could he really be that lucky?

He willed himself invisible and flew even lower, angling toward the glow. Stopping at roof height Danny scanned the area. The light had been right around here…

"Wow that was quick." Martin's voice floated up to him, seeming to come from the alley a few feet away. Danny inched forward, still hovering, peering down into the narrow side street.

"You did say ASAP, Marty," replied a high, squeaky, excited voice.

Who were they meeting? Danny dropped lower, sticking his head around the corner.

"Yeah, there was kind of a time limit." Diana piped up, "So what did you find, Billy? Anything?"

He couldn't quite see. The alley was too dark…

"Not much, except that it definitely was ectoplasm. We'll have to update the Centre database…guess we forgot last time. Anyway, there wasn't much else to find. The blood was consumed too fast for much analysis, so if you find any more samples, be sure to give me a call."

Danny's eyes finally adjusted, but he had to blink them hard. He lost his grip on his abilities, and crashed to earth, landing in a heap with a pained, _"Oof!"_

"You're an alien!" he shouted, staring with wide eyes at the little green man hovering in the parody of a flying saucer.

The alien screamed, _"Ahh! A ghost!"_ A fluid blue door materialized behind him and the tiny green man disappeared through it, waving his arms in undue panic.

Martin and Diana stood frozen in surprise, staring confusedly at Danny sprawled across the cobblestone. Martin seemed to shake himself awake first, spinning a dial on the thick green watch on his wrist and grabbing a short rod as if took form. He pressed a button, the rod extended, and he brandished it at the ghost teen, "Freeze you demonic manifestation of ectoplasm and warped human consciousness!"

"Oh great," Danny mumbled, pulling himself to his knees, "everyone's a critic."

So Martin was taking the Fenton parent's view of things, huh? That was okay. Even with a fancy watch Tucker would kill to have, they didn't really stand a chance.

"Hey, hold up," Danny raised his arms in a gesture of surrender, "you don't attack me, I won't attack you. I'm here to talk."

Starting with who the heck these two were! Hanging out with aliens, studying ectoplasm, wielding futuristic watches, jumping through space, the list went on. Were they spies?

Martin continued to glare stonily at him, "And I suppose you just wanted to talk with the loggers and Kelly Angerson's dad too, huh, ghost?"

"Who? Honestly, I have no idea what you're talking about. I just saw some glowing lights over here and decided to check it out."

"Then what happened to those people?" Diana demanded, stepping closer, staring accusingly at him.

And to think, he'd thought of himself as suspicious. Danny climbed slowly to his feet, keeping an eye on the staff in Martin's hand. He didn't know if it was infused with any ghost-hunting properties.

"Look, I just got here today and wanted to check the area out. I haven't kidnapped anyone! Please!"

Diana frowned, crossing her arms and glaring away from him. Martin's expression let up some, though he kept the staff at the ready, "Okay, supposing we believe you, what now?"

Danny sighed in relief; they, well, Martin, was willing to trust him. Even if it seemed to be a talk first, shoot later kind of trust.

"You said something about ectoplasm? I might be able to help. After all," he waved his hands at his chest, "I pretty much know that stuff inside and out."

Diana rolled her eyes, still staring at the wall refusing to look at him. "Oh ha, ha, you're a comic genius. That's _so_ funny."

Danny raised an eyebrow at her. In one form, she was crushing on him, in the other, she hated him. That sounded familiar.

Martin smirked, seeing Danny expression, "Her last encounter with ghosts didn't go so well."

"Didn't go so well?" Diana fumed, "Try complete and total disaster! I was possessed!"

"Oh." Danny rubbed the back of his neck, uncomfortable, "Um…sorry, about that? Some ghosts just can't help themselves, y'know?"

"Not really," Diana snapped.

"Right," Danny mumbled.

"Ectoplasm!" Martin intervened before anything could really happen, "Yeah, we found some at Parc la Fontaine, only it was half human blood too."

Danny froze. Had he been over there recently? He couldn't possibly-

"And then we found more just down the street from here. But both samples turned completely into ectoplasm shortly after we found it."

Danny sighed mentally: not him. And then he tensed up again. He'd never heard of blood becoming ectoplasm like that before.

"That's weird," he said aloud for their benefit, tilting his head to the side as he thought through everything he'd learned about ectoplasm in the last few years.

"More like freaky." Diana said angrily.

Danny looked over at her, "What's wrong?"

"Wrong? Oh, nothing's wrong, just a bunch of people missing and a ghost who doesn't know squat about ghost blood!"

"Diana," he sighed, "can you-"

"Let it go," Martin said, "it's not worth it. She can be really stubborn when she wants to. Trust me, I'd know."

"Hmph."

Danny shrugged, exhausted. He suddenly felt every hour of sleep he'd missed lately creeping through his body. He glanced at Diana one last time, suppressing a yawn, before turning back to the blonde.

"Thank you for trusting me, Martin. I'll keeping thinking over that blood-ectoplasm thing and I'll get back to you, but right now, I need to get going."

He willed himself invisible before Martin could protest, smiling at the looks of surprise that got him, and flew back in the direction of the school.

Martin turned to look at his step-sister when he was sure the ghost kid had gone.

"You could give him a chance you know," he said, completely forgetting that originally it was he who'd had almost attacked the ghost.

Diana didn't answer.

"C'mon Di, why're you ignoring me? What did _I_ do? Look, we made an ally-"

"Martin?"

"-who knows ghosts and can help us-"

"Martin."

"-track down the one who-"

"Martin!"

"What?" He closed his mouth as his sister finally turned to face him.

Her face was white, and her expression seemed frozen, "Martin, we never told him our names…"

* * *

**_Yeah, I am NOT writing 'M.O.M.' ever time. I'm sticking to plain capital letters._**

**_And now: Whahaha! The plot is set in motion! _**

**_I am the mysterious kidnapping ghost that you don't know yet. Fear me! (That was not a clue.)_**

**_Anyway, it's late. Good night all._**

**_Cheers, Y/P.  
_**


	5. Chapter 5

**_Crap chapter is crap._**

**_By the way, I skipped the technical crap of making a set curriculum for these guys. It's not like they're gonna be in school this whole story anyway._**

**_Everything this in this chapter has some kind of relevance to the plot, however bad my humor may be. (My funny turns into angst.)_**

**_And is there some kind on curse on crossovers that makes them hard to write? Urgh!  
_**

* * *

Diana went to sleep that night totally freaked, and woke up feeling the same way.

A ghost who may or may not be responsible for kidnapping several people knew her name.

How did you deal with that kind of fear? Talking it over with her ghost-happy step-brother didn't seem the appropriate course of action. But then again, neither did leaving a nightlight on and curling into a shivering ball of freak-out under the blankets all night.

Diana scrambled out of bed in a flurry of sheets and frizzled hair just before her alarm clock sounded. She rushed through her morning routine, checking over her shoulder so often as she brushed her teeth and hair that she was starting to wonder how bad the whiplash would be later, and dressed as fast as possible, slipping her regular shirt over her PJ top before slipping out of the former, wary of any invisible peepers. Then she practically flew out of her room, the ghost-a-phobia induced claustrophobia too much to handle reasonably.

She crashed straight into Danny Fenton, who'd been just about to knock on her door, and sent them both tumbling to the hardwood floor. Danny's head bashed against the ground and he grunted in pain before opening his eyes to see what had hit him.

Blue eyes met green, and Diana felt her breath catch for a moment before he winced and she remembered she'd just knocked him to the ground. She made a noise of embarrassment in her throat and slid off his chest, letting the black-haired teen room to move.

"Whassamatter, Diana?" he complained, rubbing a painful new lump on his head as he sat up, "You were angry at me just yesterday for running and almost hitting you, and now you're running into me?"

"Sorry," she blushed, "I just had that feeling, you know, like someone was walking over my grave."

Danny raised an eyebrow. He jumped to his feet, offering a hand to Diana, as he said, "I've found you get used to that feeling."

"Really?" she looked baffled as she accepted his hand and let him pull her to her feet.

"Yup," he stuck his hands in his pockets, deciding to have an 'accidental slip of his tongue,' "it kinda comes from having ghost hunting parents." He suddenly looked 'horrified' and shot Diana a glance, "I mean, parents who are obsessed with proving that ghosts are real, heh, not that they are of course…!"

He wanted to know how far she'd go, if she'd let fear override whatever secrecy she and her brother employed, and ask him enough about ghosts that he could become reasonably suspicious and ask her why she wanted to know. He wanted to find out _who_ they were. Based on the data he'd collected thus far, he'd have to assume they were alien spies in a territory war with another alien colony that was stealing their prey. And there was no way _that_ was possible! There had to be a better explanation. He spared another furtive glance at the teenager beside him.

Diana seemed be weighing the options. She was silent for a moment as they started walking down the hallway toward the classrooms. Eventually she asked, "Do you believe in ghosts?"

Was she testing him? Making sure he wouldn't laugh at her?

He screwed up his face regardless, playing along with his earlier denial, "Yes."

Diana looked relieved and Danny smiled at her. If his parents really were ghost hunters/researchers/whatever, she now had someone to go to for more information. This was great!

"You said your parents hunted ghosts? Then could you teach me how to get rid of one?"

"Having some ghostly trouble?" he half-taunted.

Diana's expression remained serious, and he let the weak smile fall.

Did she honestly think he was haunting her? She'd only met Phantom once! Or maybe she just wanted to be prepared in case he did?

Danny debated how best to answer, something that sounded reasonable but wouldn't pose a threat to him? Or something that actually worked, and hope she'd listen before attacking? So many possibilities…

"Okay Diana," he said with a small sigh, "the first thing you need to know is that not all ghosts are evil. You need to make sure this one isn't just overfriendly, 'cause sometimes turning them away does make them angry."

Diana blanched. Danny continued, "This ghost didn't attack you, did it? If it's willing to talk rather than fight, then you really _should_ talk. Ghosts can make pretty good allies if you give them the chance."

He spoke both from experience and a desire to make her more willing to trust Phantom. He'd try to calm her to the idea that not all ghosts were to be feared, and then find a way to 'set up' a meeting with, well, himself.

"And if they aren't friendly?" Diana asked, "How do you know if it's lying?"

"What makes you think that?" He'd given her no reason not to trust him, and he'd just explained a solution that was not only completely plausible but also peaceable!

Diana glared, folding her arms across her chest, "Do you know something you're not telling me?"

"Uh, what makes you think _that_?" Danny chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. All these years of protecting his secret only to accidently have it revealed to a possibly alien spy all because she took an indirect shot at his ego? "I only meant, uh…"

"Hey, guys!"

Danny silently thanked Martin's amazing timing as they turned to face the approaching blonde. His eyes were practically shining and he looked as if the meeting with Phantom hadn't bothered him in the slightest, which suited Danny just fine. Diana, however, scowled at smile on her brother's face.

"Why so glum, chum?" he asked, nudging her crossed arms with his elbow.

Diana rolled her eyes, "Nothing, Martin," she glared sideways at the wall, "Just our guidance appointment."

Martin looked baffled for a moment, "Guidance? Wha? Oh! Right," he waved his hand dismissively, "Why're you worried about that?"

Diana raised an eyebrow at her step-brother, "It can't possibly be that a certain ghost knows our names or anything!"

Oops…Danny promised himself to be more careful about what he said around whom.

Martin looked horrified, glancing from his sister to their out-of-the-loop friend and back, "Diana! Danny's-!"

"He knows. His parents hunted ghosts" she cut in impatiently, "But you could show a little more concern! We have…"

Danny tuned the conversation out, focusing on a more important topic, such as how he was going to get Diana to trust his ghost half. He could 'pop in' after school, but then she could just run off to Martin if he wasn't already with her. He could show up during lunch? Or class? Except that it was only his second day at Torrington, he couldn't exactly skip…Wait a minute!

The warning bell rang, startling all three teens (one of which was past the teen years) out of their thoughts. They shared a worried look, and then dashed as one toward the Cultures wing of the school, backpacks flying dangerously from positions in tightly clenched fists.

Danny grinned as he ran. It was going to be confusing, if not hard, but he could do it. Closing his eyes and running blind with only the step-siblings as a guide, Danny concentrated, reaching inside himself to connect with his ghost core while still maintaining a hold on the human one. With an odd, jolting shiver Danny felt himself change within himself, a ghostly duplicate phasing out invisibly from his back a second later.

The newly banded trio of Danny, Martin, and Diana flew into the classroom and slipped into their seats just as the second bell sounded. Mr. Ericson grinned conspiratorially as they pulled out their books before beginning his lesson/lecture. The three smiled weakly in return.

Hovering invisibly near the classroom's ceiling, Phantom watched himself scratch down a note or two on the Roman empire, and decided he should have waited until after class to duplicate, though he _could_ use this time to practice being two different people. It didn't take so much energy as it once used to; he could create and maintain four good copies through a decently heavy battle and not change back exhausted beyond measure. So that wasn't a problem, but it was boring. What was he supposed to do for the next…however long class was?

He sank lower, landing in the aisle next to a pretty red headed girl whose binder announced in swirly, sparkly letters that her name was Jenny.

Danny glanced around at the rest of the class. About a third was dutifully listening to Mr. Ericson and taking notes on his lecture. Another few were staring a nothing spots around the classroom and outside the window. The last couple, of which Jenny was included, was staring in the direction of the professor with their minds clearly elsewhere, pencils abandoned, and eyes blank.

Danny smirked. Okay, so it wasn't exactly hero-like, what he was planning, but it wasn't harmful either. Just some safe, half-ghost-with-a-hero-complex humor.

Leaning invisibly on the desk next to the ignorant teenage redhead, Danny casually flicked her pencil from where if sat on her open notebook. The yellow No.2 rolled slowly until it bumped her elbow, where she was leaning forward on the table. Jenny looked at it, and then absently set it back in place.

Danny flicked it again. Jenny looked slightly confused this time as she replaced the pencil.

Flick.

It rolled down the page, stopping dutifully by her arm.

Replace.

Danny grinned at the expression on the girl's face as the pencil seemingly pushed itself into motion.

Flick.

Replace.

Repeat.

He couldn't help it. Danny sniggered, clapping a hand over his mouth to muffle the sound. Unfortunately, the wrong version responded.

"Is there a problem, Mr. Fenton?" Ericson asked, coming to stand in front of the black haired boy.

"Um, no sir." Danny fished around in both his minds for a good excuse that related to the teaching topic, "It's just funny how people nowadays think we, humans, have become so much more civilized than ancient times. They look at gladiators and tyrant emperors and say that, yeah, the Romans were smart but at the same time barbaric. Well, that's no different from us; we have pro-wrestling and dictators even with all of our technological advances."

Ericson stared at him for a moment, "Nice save, Mr. Fenton."

He returned to his lecture and both Dannys* sighed.

Jenny whipped her head to the side, wide, worried eyes passing over the invisible ghost-boy next to her. Danny decided she'd had enough. He didn't want any fainting or ghost reports happening.

He looked around and floated over to a well-muscled, dark haired boy who looked just as intimidating as Dash Baxter always had. He was drawing something that looked vaguely football shaped being hurled at a stick figure who may have been Martin.

Danny reached for his cold core, summoning just a tiny bit of the ice that developed there. He blew a chilly breath at the back of the boy's head, watching as he shivered and clapped a hand to his neck while surreptitiously checking around to see if anyone popular had noticed.

The rest of class passed in mostly the same fashion.

When the bell rang to signal the end of class, Danny flew over to Diana. He needed to get her to stay behind somehow. He didn't think just asking with the room half full of people was the best idea…He noticed that her pencil case was unzipped. That could work. He hooked a finger around the edge, and, when her elbow came near enough, he yanked it off the desk.

Its contents clattered to the floor, pens, pencils, and markers rolling between their feet, under the desk and chair. Diana groaned, rolling her eyes as she bent down to pick up her supplies.

Danny glanced around their immediate area, making sure no one had lingered to chat while, on the other side of the room, his human form did the same. They locked eyes, despite one being invisible and a shared an almost imperceptible nod, before the human returned to answering Martin's rapid-fire questions about his parent's job.

Danny ducked down, watched as Diana gathered the last few pens into the case. There was a now or never kind of feel to this, but he didn't doubt that he should do it.

The girl reached for the last marker; Danny placed a hand flat on top of it so that when Diana made to pick it up it wouldn't come.

"What?" Diana pulled harder, straining to pick the thin, plastic writing utensil off the floor.

"Why…won't…it come?"

"Diana?"

A white-gloved hand suddenly materialized, clamped around the other end of the pen. Diana froze, breath catching in her throat, as her eyes traveled slowly up. Black jumpsuit, funky white 'D,' tan skin, green eyes that glowed, white hair…it was the ghost from last night! Diana opened her mouth to scream, eyes going wide with fright.

"No, wait!" Danny whipped his hand up, clamping it over the girl's mouth, "Please don't yell! I'm sorry if I scared you, but don't scream!"

Diana just stared back at him, eyes terrified.

"Look," Danny said, speaking quickly, "you made it clear last night that you don't trust me. I understand that. After all, I'm a ghost. But I want to talk to you. I want to show you that not all ghosts are evil…Please?"

Danny Fenton's words from earlier floated through her head, that turning some ghosts away made them angry and vengeful, so she nodded.

The ghost looked slightly more hopeful, "If I take my hand away, are you gonna scream?"

Diana shook her head frantically, mumbling 'no' through his fingers. The ghost cautiously removed his hand, watching her face for any sign that she was about to cry out despite her denial.

"We can't talk _here_," Diana said quietly, as the last of the students trickled out of the classroom, "Someone'll see you! And there's a new class coming in."

"I wasn't thinking of here. Got your books? Good. Give me your hand."

Diana raised an eyebrow skeptically as he held his out to her.

"Trust me on this?" His face was pleading.

Sighing to herself at the stupidity of what she was doing, Diana shifted her school books into one arm and slowly, shivering slightly, put her hand in the ghost's. His chilly fingers wrapped around hers and she gasped, overcome by a sudden tingling through her entire body.

"Don't worry," the ghost seemed to have read her mind, "It's just intangibility…What? You didn't think we could just walk out of here did you?"

Diana scrunched her face up, "Maybe…" she muttered sourly.

Danny grinned, "Don't freak out."

Diana felt herself become weightless, and squeezed her eyes shut, her fingers tightening their grip on the ghost's hand. He could drop her. He could just float her up into the sky and drop her, yelling "Sike*" as she fell! This was a bad idea! If she lived through the next few minutes, she promised herself, she'd get Fenton back for putting this stupid idea in her head!

Eventually she felt gravity return, and the ghost saying in his echoing voice that it was okay to look again. Diana cautiously cracked an eye open, tapping one foot slightly. Okay, so she was definitely on solid ground, but then why did the view look so…wrong?

With a small shriek of surprise, Diana leapt sideways, throwing herself into the ghost's arms as she realized they were standing on the top of Torrington Academy's clock tower.  
"Woah, hey, it's fine! As long as you don't go throwing yourself around, you won't fall! Are you scared of heights? I can take you someplace else."

Diana leaned slowly over, inching her head past the edge of the tower, still clutching firmly at the ghost's jumpsuit. "Um, no," she swallowed, "I'm fine."

Not releasing her grip, Diana sank to her knees, leaning against the center spire of the clock tower. The ghost sank down with her, seeming totally at ease with being so high up on such a tiny ledge.

"So," Diana laughed nervously, looking anywhere but at the edge, "What did you want to talk about?"

Danny gently pried the girl's fingers off his shirt, "Uh, I'm not really sure. I just wanted to maybe get to know you a little, and hopefully convince you that I'm not some psycho monster bent on destroying all of humanity and whatnot." Not in this reality anyway.

"Oh yeah, and the first thing you do to show me you're not evil is drag me up here…you're doing do smashing so far."

"We can go somewhere else if you want to. I just didn't want anyone to burst in on us, and the really tall tower nearby just seemed like the perfect place. If you know a better one, I'm all ears, but who's gonna see us up here?"

"Heh...yeah..." Diana nervously twisted the strap of her purse between her fingers, her eyes scanning the ghost's face, waiting for him to start the conversation, or explanation, or whatever he hoped to do to convince her he was a nice ghost. When that seemed unlikely, she fished around in her head for something to ask.

"So…um, I don't…Where are you from?"

"Meh," the ghost waved a hand airily. "Tiny little town in Illinois: Amity Park." With a small grin he added, "It's a nice place to live."

Diana kept her face blank, and slowly the smile faded from the ghost's face. He rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably and turned to observe the various students and faculty rushing about below the clock tower.

Diana didn't know what to say. How were you supposed to talk to ghosts? So far as she knew the majority of ectoplasmic entities just growled at you and attacked. But this one was different. He seemed more…human…than any phantasmic creatures she'd encountered so far. He'd made an effort to reach out to her, regardless of how unnecessarily frightening his methods may have been.

She looked sideways at the ghost. He was staring contentedly out into the open sky, his legs crossed, elbow on his knee, and head in his hand. Diana looked him over more closely, scanning his thin, yet muscled frame.

He wore some kind of bodysuit (for hazmat?) that hugged his form like a second skin, made of alternating black and white material. His hair was bleached beyond the point of retaining any colour, and it looked kind of weird to see that in someone who looked so young. His face was roundish, as if unwilling to give up that last essence of boyhood. And his eyes…

They creeped her out if she was being honest with herself. The white hair, the glowing, the flying and whatnot, she could take (maybe) but his eyes were toxic green. Too bright, too unnatural looking.

Diana shivered and quickly lowered her gaze as the ghost turned those same, freaky-coloured eyes on her, his expression slightly concerned. Her sight zeroed in on the emblem stuck on in the negative on his black-clothed chest.

"What's that mean?" she asked, pointing at the symbol.

He looked down at it, as if unsure of what she was indicating, though what he could possibly mistake if for she didn't know.

"Uh…It's a D," he said simply.

Diana nodded for him to go on.

"With a little inverted P on the inside. A friend made it for me," he said, recalling the embarrassing episode where Sam had wished they'd never met and he'd had to learn to reuse his powers. "It's my initials. DP."

Diana waited for a second, but the ghost was avoiding her eyes. "And what's that stand for?" she finally asked.

The ghost seemed almost to cringe. Danny took a deep breath, bracing himself. Diana was smart, sharp. She noticed things. In the two days since they'd met, that fact was the one thing that had been the most obvious about her.

'Don't be more observant than the majority of Amity Park,' he silently begged her, 'Don't be more observant…'

Out loud, he answered, "Danny Phantom."

Diana scoffed, "Honestly? Phantom?"

"What? It's a decent name," he defended halfheartedly, relieved that she hadn't called him out yet.

Diana grinned, shaking her head slowly back and forth, humoring him. She peeked a sideways look at him, saw him smiling as well.

"You're the second Danny I've met this week," she said, resuming her picking on the purse strap, her smiled faded but lingering.

Danny frowned. He could do one of three things now.

One: he could admit that he knew…himself, and hopefully dissuade and suspicions of them being one and the same.

Two: he could feign ignorance and ask who the other Danny was, and again hopefully quash any suspicions.

Or three: he could simply not answer, and let her forget about the 'coincidence'… hopefully.

He decided to go for the first option.

"Fenton?" he asked, looking carefully at her reaction.

Diana looked startled, "You know Danny?"

He didn't know if her surprise was a good thing or not. But he nodded, "We've met a few times. When we- I first became a ghost, he helped get me out of his parent's lab before they could vaporize me, or dissect me, or whatever it is they really do when they capture ghosts."

It was true, though not in the context he'd let her believe.

"Oh." Diana looked like she might be sick. "We usually just lock them- I mean…couldn't the Fenton's just lock the ghosts up or something? Instead of just…destroying them?"

Danny smiled bitterly, "You try suggesting that to them. They're all about how ghosts don't have feelings and can't die again anyway."

Diana frowned, staring down at various couples walking across campus, laughing easily while she discussed death and torture with a ghost.

Death…She hadn't thought much of it (discounting various missions) and she really didn't want to. But the subject was kind of hard to avoid when you were hanging out with a ghost.

Her eyes slid sideways. She wondered…

"Danny? Can- can I ask you a question?"

The ghost searched her face for a moment, taking in her unease. She was going to ask something difficult, he thought. This could be his only chance.

"Only if I can ask you one," he said, his expression serious.

Diana bit her lip for a moment, before nodding and blurting, "How did you die?"

Danny hesitated. He could tell her what most ghosts would answer: that that was a very private question, thanks for asking, now suffer my wrath. But he wanted an answer to his question too.

"It was stupid, an accident. The Fentons were working on…this project and I touched the wrong button and got electrocuted. That was the first time I met Danny; he got me out before his parents could zap me into the Ghost Zone."

"Ghost Zone?" Diana asked, curiosity sparking in her eyes.

"On no, I answered your question, now you have to answer mine. I'll tell you the Zone stories when Martin's around, I don't want to be repeating myself." Despite the attempt at keeping the mood light, Danny's expression remained fixed in serious lines.

"Fine," Diana pouted. "What's your question?"

"What are you?"

Diana shot up straight, worry colouring her face as she forced out, in her calmest voice, "What?"

The ghost's expression was intense, and he shifted around to face her directly, "You and Martin, what are you? You have this…warp technology, and that watch, and you were studying ectoplasm, and chatting with an alien. _Who_ are you?"

Diana let her breath out in a huff, and she pulled her knees up to her chin. She supposed she owed it to him to answer; after all, her question had been quite personal. And, she figured, it couldn't hurt _too much_ to tell a ghost about her secret agent occupation. After all, he _was_ a ghost; it wasn't like he could go public and expose them. And so far as she knew, there weren't any 'civilian entrances' to the Centre.

"We're paranormal investigators," she said heavily, "We work for a secret organization called the Centre who clean up and solve cases dealing with extraterrestrials and monsters and whatever else is beyond normal."

Danny blinked at her.

"Huh," he said eventually.

"Why?" Diana asked, "What did you think we were?"

"Aliens," he said, looking her over with some new kind of respect, awe in his strange green eyes.

"Ha!" Diana laughed, "Not even close. Well, Martin maybe…"

Danny grinned with her.

The rest of the day passed quickly. Diana didn't know when exactly it was that she'd started to feel comfortable (or at least normal) around the ghost, but now she'd go so far as to dare to call him a friend.

She hurried back to her dorm as the sun was setting, a whole new kind of worry on her face. She'd skipped a whole day of class! In the middle of the semester! What if they'd learned something that came up in their exams? What would she do then?

Diana stumbled in a frantic rush to her dorm door, pausing only with her hand on the knob when she heard her step-brother laughing manically. That was never a good sign.

Creeping over to the sticker-plastered door, she gently eased into the room, scanning nervously for any lurking booby-traps or impending pranks.

Martin burst into another fit of laughter, nearly scaring the wits off his sister. This time he was joined by a slightly deeper voice and Diana peered around the bed to see her blonde sibling playing an intense game of…whatever video game that happened to be, with a darker haired boy, both wearing thick headphones.

Diana rolled her eyes; Of course.

She walked up behind the two oblivious teenagers and, in one swift motion, yanked off the headphones.

"Wah!" Martin yelled, flailing desperately as tried not to fall backwards. On screen, his character was slowly mobbed by a horde of digital zombies.

Danny was teetering too. "No, no, no…!" he cried, flopping sideways as his character sank into an oozing swamp.

"Aw, Diana…" the boys moaned simultaneously, staring pitifully up at her from awkward positions on the floor.

"Don't 'Aw Diana' me. You two should be studying! Especially you Danny, you have a lot to catch up on!"

"Says the girl who never showed up for classes today," the blue-eyes boy grinned mischievously.

Diana paled, "I didn't-! There was good reason I-!"

"Don't sweat it, Sis," Martin said, climbing to his feet to and patting the girl on the back, "A little break from class is healthy once and a while."

"Hmmph," Diana crossed her arms over her chest, glaring.

"So, why did you miss class Diana?" Danny asked, throwing himself down on Martin's bed and leaning back on outstretched arms.

"I was…" Diana glanced from Martin to Danny and back, before saying, rather uncomfortably, "I was talking to that ghost from before."

"The one you thought was haunting you?"

"Well he isn't actually. He seems really nice and he just wanted me to trust him to help."

"Ha!" Martin laughed victoriously, fist-pumping, "Told you he was good guy!"

Diana glared halfheartedly as her brother jumped on to the roll chair by his desk, spinning a few times, smirking at her.

"Did you get his name?" Danny asked, swinging one foot against the edge of the bed, looking curiously up at the green-eyed girl.

Diana looked at him, her expression daring him to contradict the ghost's previous words as she said, "Danny Phantom."

"You met Phantom?" Danny sat up straight, trying to look excited and slightly jealous. He wasn't sure how it came across. "That's so cool!"

"So you _do_ know him?"

"Of course! He's only Amity Park's most famous ghost and very own superhero!" So he was stroking his own ego, you can't blame a guy for liking praise. He also hoped to make it seem like he hero-worshiped…himself like Amity's younger generation.

"I've met him a couple times too," Danny beamed.

"But if he's Amity Park's superhero…what's he doing way up here in Torrington?" Martin wondered out loud, putting a hand on his chin.

'Darn it! _That_ was a question I was trying to avoid,' Danny sighed mentally.

"You think he's following you? Diana asked.

The black haired boy shrugged.

"You're not being haunted are you?" Martin asked, rather too hopefully.

"Not by Phantom."

"Maybe he's-"

Danny slid to his feet, "Look, can we not talk about this? I'll see you guys tomorrow but I need to…go do homework."

He brushed past Diana and out the door, leaving the step-siblings in startled silence.

"What was that about?" Martin frowned.

Diana winced, "Well, we were being kind of callous. Nobody wants to think about being haunted."

Martin just shrugged and spun around on his chair, opening a window on his already powered up computer.

"What are doing?" his step-sister asked, leaning over his shoulder.

"Looking up 'Danny Phantom.'"

"Hmm, says here he attacked the Mayor of Amity Park, and yet the next article is about how he saved a bus load of children. Look, most of these are contradictory."

Martin scrolled rapidly through several more articles before he decided they weren't getting anything worthwhile. He clicked 'Images' at the top of the web browser.

There were a few blurry photos of buildings and what looked like a glowing white blob hovering above them, a couple poorly doctored images of a pretty Latina girl hugging the ghost boy, and only one or two clear pictures. Most of those were from too far away to capture any facial features.

"Wait, there!" Diana pointed.

Martin enlarged the picture.

"He looks familiar. As in, more than just 'we met him last night.'"

Diana nodded, eyes roving the image. "He looks kind of like…Danny."

"Uh, Di, he is Danny."

She slapped the back of the blonde's head, "I meant Danny Fenton!"

Martin pouted, rubbing the slightly throbbing spot on his head, but turned to scrutinize the picture again.

"Hey, you're right!"

"There was doubt?" Diana smirked.

Martin glared. Diana smiled sweetly.

"Okay I've got it!" Martin suddenly announced.

"Got what?"

"Danny and Danny! There's only one possible explanation!"

"Only one?" Diana muttered, bracing herself.

"They're twins!" Martin cried triumphantly.

Diana deadpanned. "Seriously?"

"Of course!" Martin jumped up from his chair. "Danny and Danny were twins, and life was good in Amity Park, until one day one of them died! Except that they couldn't bear to be apart so he came back as a ghost, and now he's following his brother who may or may not know about it. Huh, but that would mean Danny lied to us…"

Diana sighed heavily as her brother sank into a depressed kind of acceptance. "There's only one problem with your theory genius: Who names _both_ of their twin sons Danny? No, you doofus, I'm thinking that Phantom was just another kid from Amity Park except that he died. And when he came back he imprinted on Danny because he couldn't remember any of his own life. That would explain the name _and_ look-alike thing."

"Well fine, if you wanna get technical…" Martin muttered.

"I'm just being logical, _Marty_. Y'know, using my brain to actually-"

Diana's sentence was cut off by a scream as she lurched backwards. "Martin!"

"Diana!" Martin jumped forwards, catching his step-sister by the ankles before she could fall into the glowing green vortex that was suddenly swirling in the middle of his room. "Hold on!"

"Martin! Help!" Diana screamed desperately, her hair whipping around her head as the force of the portal dragged her toward its whirling green depths.

Martin grunted, pulling as hard as he could against the current of air while trying not to get sucked in himself. Papers blew past him, disappearing into the vortex, a few shirts and school supplies following. But Martin felt himself sliding along the waxed wooden floor regardless. Abandoning his sister was out of the question, he thought, as her slowly got closer to the swirling green disk of energy. Diana's chest was through the portal, and more of her body was disappearing every second. But he couldn't get to his U-Watch! He felt as if even one twitch of his fingers would cause the girl to slip out of his grasp.

"Diana?" Martin barely heard the new voice as he struggled, but he felt a pair of strong arms wrap around his waist, just as Diana's knees were swallowed up.

"Don't let go!" Danny Fenton shouted in his ear. As if he was going to drop his sister!

Some small part of Danny's mind shocked, wondering how on Earth a ghost portal had opened up in Martin's dorm room all the way in Sherbrooke, Quebec. But the greater part was focused on saving his friends.

Leaning backward, with Martin's help, Danny managed to get them slightly farther away from the portal. He took one full step back, but they were still sliding on the wooden floor.

Martin's wrists were disappearing now.

Clenching his teeth, Danny split himself in two, his ghost half grabbing the human around the waist, hovering above the sleek wood, flying backwards.

Fenton felt his fingers slipping. What was this? Ghost portals were usually just _there_! Why was this one sucking them in?

Suddenly he felt himself flying backwards. Both halves of the whole Danny hit the wall, one behind the other, shoving them into one person again. Martin hit a second later.

Danny watched with slightly blurry eyes as the portal shrunk, growing smaller and smaller until it blinked from existence.

He struggled to his feet, staring at the spot.

"I…I can't believe it…" Martin whispered, horrified, slumped against the back wall of his dorm. "I let her go. I dropped Diana."

* * *

_***Would the plural of Danny be Dannies?**_

**_And *Sike is how you spell it right? Like when you hold a football for someone to kick and the pull it away at the last second Charlie Brown style?_**


	6. Chapter 6

**_Sorry, sorry, sorry! But I've got summer break now, at least, and I know what to write again :3_**

**_...It's been a whole semester since I start this -_-_**

* * *

Martin stared at the place his step-sister had vanished.

He'd only gotten a brief glimpse of the other side of the vortex before Danny had pulled him back out, and before his fingers had slipped from Diana's ankles; cold, dark swirling green with bits of purple…it didn't seem the most friendly place, but then again you didn't often get forcibly sucked into sweet, happy gingerbread homes in their line of work.

"Martin?"

The paranormal investigator blinked, focusing on the hand Danny Fenton was waving in front of his face.

"You okay?" the halfa queried, simply because he didn't know what else to say.

Martin shrugged, understanding the laws of society and friendship that bound the dark haired boy to ask.

"Any idea what that was?" he asked, climbing to his feet from where he'd been slumped against the wall. He winced as his head throbbed once, brain lurching painfully before settling back down.

"Uh," Danny hesitated, rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably. He knew what Martin was really asking; it wasn't so much the 'what was it' as it was the 'where's my sister.' "Well, actually I do know. It was a-"

He was cut off by a high pitched beeping that issued from the wall on the other side of the room. Danny looked at the seemingly blank patch of wall, then back to Martin, unsure. The blonde looked rather shocked at first but his face took on a kind of vacant relief after a moment.

Martin brushed past his confused, dark-haired friend and, after only a moment's hesitation in which he looked back and searched Danny's innocent blue eyes with his piercing brown ones, pushed a small panel of wood back, placed his hand on a scanner.

The machine beeped and a larger section of the wall seemed to sink in on itself before sliding sideways and making room for…well, to Danny it looked like some kind of faintly glowing, futuristic, sci-fi arcade gaming console.

Martin slipped into the waiting chair as Danny crept cautiously forward. As he approached, keeping just far enough away as to be able to sink into the shadows of the half-lit room, a monitor glowed to life and the face of a pale, dark-haired woman wearing some kind of lab coat and a fierce expression appeared on it.

"_Agent Mystery,"_ the woman intoned. _"Tell me Martin, is your U-Watch malfunctioning of did something happen? I've been trying to contact you for over twenty minutes, but the signal is practically non-existent."_

"Something happened, MOM," Martin said, his tone far more serious than Danny had ever heard it before, "Some kind of portal opened up in my dorm room and sucked up Diana! The U-Watch went with her. Do you have enough signal to get a fix on her location?"

"_I'll have Billy get to work on that immediately,"_ the pale woman said, nodding to someone, or, if Danny remembered correctly, some_thing_ off screen. _"In the meantime Martin, I want you to come in and give me the details, everything you remember. I'll have a portal opened in your closet in a moment. But before any of that, Martin, I wanted to warn you: be careful around Danny Fenton."_

Said boy froze, eyes widening as the mysterious, angry woman said his name. How much did she know? Or did she simply come to the same conclusion as Martin and Diana had, that he was being stalked by Phantom, by himself?

Martin tensed too, and shifted in the high tech seat so he could see Danny in his peripheral vision while still looking at the woman. Danny arched his eyebrows at the blonde.

"_Things_," the woman stressed, _"seem to happen around him. Odd disappearances, destroyed property, a high school track record to match yours…I wasn't able to find out exactly how, but there is a connection between him and a ghost boy named,"_ and here you could practically see sarcasm dripping in thick globules off the name, "Inviso-Bill_, or alternatively, Phantom."_

"Uh, yeah, MOM…?" Martin broke in, poking his pointer fingers together in a gesture of awkwardness, "He's kind of…right here."

"_What?"_ the lady's eyes narrowed dangerously, her tone flat and positively terrifying.

Danny swallowed and crept forward, coming into view of the woman on the screen, his face blank of emotion and his stance neutral, anything but to appear malevolent.

There was a beat of silence as the woman stared with fierce, silver-blue eyes at the nervous half-ghost, then she simply said, _"He comes too."_

The screen went dead, the electronic beep clearly audible in the lingering silence caught in the wake of the Centre director's words.

"_So_…secret agent, huh?" Danny said, suddenly remembering that he wasn't supposed to know this already; Diana had told Phantom, but Fenton was still out of the loop.

"Paranormal Investigator," Martin said, pulling out an official-looking badge and smirking slightly.

"That went better than I expected," he said, walking over and opening the door to see his regular old closet. "Hmmm…"

"What," Danny asked, "the introductions?"

"Yeah, I mean, she could have remotely activated the computer's defenses, trapped us both in a laser-bar cage and deployed a whole Centre team to come wipe your memory."

Danny blanched. Skulker, natural instincts, and the imminent threat of being shoved on a lab table and dissected were enough to put anyone off cages, but he'd had enough memory-erasing experiences to last him a lifetime, even an extended one like his was turning out to be. And besides, he really didn't want to have to relearn to use his powers a third time.

"But I think with your knowledge of ghost hunting and possible access to your parent's equipment, MOM might consider downloading some of your memories first."

"Uh…Is that a 'yikes' or a 'Wow, Marty, thanks for helping me think on the bright side' kinda thing?" Danny wondered aloud, flopping backwards onto the teen's bed.

Martin grinned at him, but his smile fell as he pulled open the closet door to again find nothing out of the ordinary. "What's taking them so long?"

Danny suddenly sat up straight, struck by a very obvious thought that should have been instantaneous a half-hour ago, when this whole thing started.

"Martin, you know how you asked me if I knew what that portal was, but your mom, or whoever she is, cut me off? I _do _know. That was a ghost portal: a gateway between the human realm and the Ghost Zone. Whoever or whatever took Diana is a ghost, or at the very least is using ghostly methods or minions." He paused to take a breath, "I can help with this! And this is more than just me trying not to get my mind erased, I _can_ help with this. You and Diana may do aliens, but ghosts are my territory, ghost hunting's in my blood. And be grateful I'm so paranoid: I've got a miniature arsenal of ghost weaponry in my room."

Martin blinked dumbly for a moment, too shocked to react. Then a smile crept up his face, mischief curling his lips. "This is gonna be fun," the overenthusiastic, childlike, paranormal geek said.

He checked the closet for a portal one last time before opening the hallway door and sweeping his hand dramatically, "After you."

Danny rolled his eyes at the exuberant teenager. He slipped off the bed, past Martin, and led the way across the hall into his school-issued bedroom.

His eyes scanned the dark room and the rather windy night outside the window while his hand felt for the light switch. Paranoid.

Danny crossed to the closet while Martin leaned against the nearly-empty, still-school-issued desk that was bolted to the wall. His eyes scanned the room also, heeding MOM's warning and his own instincts which were tuned by experience. Bright, brown eyes lighted on the silver and green thermos perched innocently on the broad headboard of Danny's bed, the same thermos said boy had fearfully snatched from Diana's curious hands.

Martin glanced sideways at the dark-haired boy; he was rummaging through a massive suitcase, his attention on his task…

Like a child drawn to the shiny toys of a window display, Martin found his hand reaching over to pluck the thermos up, twisting it curiously in his hands. He trailed a finger down the sleek metal, admiring the design. But why would a _thermos_, of all things, need to be this high tech?

"_You're not gonna to get three wishes, if that's what you're after,"_ growled a semi-familiar voice from inside the soup container.

There was a metallic crash as Danny jumped to his feet, lurching over to where Martin stood, eyes wide, terrified. He snatched for the Thermos, ripping it roughly from the blonde teen's hands and holding it, almost cradling it, to his chest.

"What do you think you're doing? I told you earlier not to touch that!" Danny cried, a hint of panic in his voice as he dropped his eyes to check the Thermos' seal, before he looked back up at Martin.

"_Oh, we have a visitor? How quaint Danny, you're finally making friends. Is he a _trusted_ friend? Does he know that you're-"_

"Shut up, Dan! Shut up!"

Martin watched in total amazement as Danny shook the thermos violently, blue eyes wide with worry and anger. Just what _was_ that thing to make mild-mannered Danny Fenton react like this?

The Voice in the Thermos was laughing, clearly enjoying Danny's distress.

"Danny?" Martin asked cautiously, "what-? Who…?"

Danny clenched his eyes shut, turning his face away. "Nobody," he said, his tone closing off any further questions.

"_Nobody!"_

"Yeah, nobody," Danny said, a slight smirk on his face as he looked through the Thermos towards his alternate self, "seeing as your timeline doesn't exist and all."

"_Oh ha-ha, I'm _killing_ myself laughing. You're a comic genius._" There was a pause, _"And speaking of genius, I bet your friend's staring at you like you got three eyes right now. You gonna explain better or can _I_ have the honors?"_

Danny growled. He looked up to see a very accurately described expression on Martin's face. "We do have a time limit here," he said, hoping to put off the inevitable conversation.

Martin raised his eyebrows but made no move to leave.

Danny sighed. "Fine. But technically, he _doesn't_ exist. His timeline is erased. _Forever_," he stressed, giving the Thermos a little shake.

"_Deny it all you want, Danny, but it'll happen sometime. It's inevitable."_

"It would be three years in the future now. _Dan_," he shook the Thermos again, "destroys the whole world. He conquers the Ghost Zone and reduces most of the human realm to rubble. Except Amity Park."

"Your home?"

Danny nodded, clenching his fingers around the battered metal container, "_Our_ home. M- His family was killed in a freak accident when a boiler of Nasty Burger sauce exploded. He went to…He went crazy, accidentally fusing with the evil half of his ghost archenemy. He _used_ to be Phantom."

"What? You're saying that's-"

"_Oh, it's all very nice but you left out one important detail, Danny_ Phantom_."_

"You called?" A white haired head suddenly popped through the floor, followed by the rest of Amity Park's ghostly hero. Both Dannys were glaring at the Thermos.

"_HA! Ha ha, how _cute!_ You're even more like me than we realized!" _The ghost in the thermos laughed its head off, while Danny, ghost copy and human original, glared murderously at the containment device, lips curling up in identical snarls.

Martin simply watched, eyes wide, a little frightened. His gaze flicked to the open door, away from the three versions of Danny. He'd left his door open just as Danny had, and so had a clear view all the way across the hallway, to the thin rim of glowing blue radiating from behind his closed closet door.

"Uh…" he wasn't too keen on interrupting this little…reunion…comprised of two ghosts and a human, all named Danny…but an angry MOM was a much more daunting prospect. "If you're coming, our ride's here."

Wordlessly, Fenton passed the Thermos to Phantom, letting him phase the battered device, again, into the headboard while the first walked around and dragged the heavy weapons bag to the door.

Martin didn't question Phantom's accompanying them as he led the way back to his dorm, though he did worry about MOM's reaction when he walked into the Centre with _two_ unauthorized personnel beside him.

He pulled open the door, looked back to nod reassuringly at the two Americans behind him before slipping through the glowing, watery blue doorway.

Fenton glanced back at Phantom, but the copy that was at once separate and yet connected simply shrugged as if to say 'why not.'

Breathing deep, both Dannys stepped through the fluid gateway, emerging whole and dry on a hovering platform next to Martin.

Awed, Danny looked around the seemingly wall-less space with its sideways elevators, upside down catwalks, and multitude of computer terminals. Excited, Phantom floated a little higher, feet level with Martin's waist, blue and green eyes taking in both sides of the room at once.

"What is this place?" the faintly glowing, teen-shaped ghost asked.

"This is the Centre, headquarters of the world's best paranormal fighters."

Danny turned to face the monotone, freezing at the sight of ten or so glowing bazookas pointed at him, "Now get out."

"Wait, MOM, don't shoot!"

The woman in the lab coat-dress kept her weapon steady on the hovering ghost-teen as she turned to raise a skeptical eyebrow at Martin. Her gun whined as she prepared to fire anyway.

"He's with us," Martin said, gesturing to Fenton who raised his hands in surrender. "Danny thinks Diana might be in the Ghost Zone, and who better to help us get through it than a ghost?"

"All the more reason to keep a gun on him," the pale woman said, eyes narrowed, "I've found they make excellent motivators."

"Please don't shoot!" Martin said, skidding sideways and raising his arms in a pointless effort to shield the ghost who floated just above his reach. "This is Danny Phantom, the superhero of Amity Park, the ghost who already tried to help us with our mission! Just give him a chance!"

After a few tense moments, the gun was lowered ever so slightly, the glow of its charge fading as the woman jabbed it in the direction of the white-haired not-so-teenager, "You put one ecto-_toe_ out of line, you'll have so many guns on you there won't be enough ectoplasm left to fill a test tube."

Phantom swallowed. "Got it," he said, nodding, the unnoticed Fenton in synch with his movements.

MOM nodded at the other guards, and the white-suited men lowered their weapons, though their fingers remained on the triggers. The pale, angry woman turned and walked down an aisle next to the platform's track.

Martin looked back at the two outsiders, pursing his lips and shrugging his shoulders. He started after his boss, the two halves of the halfa hot on his heels, and the Centre guards surrounding them.

Somehow, they managed to all cram into the gravity lift, though Phantom moving to float over their heads helped. They staggered out with relief at MOM's office, only the woman managing to keep her dignity as Martin, Danny, and a few guards crashed painfully to the ground side by side, while the others wobbled around trying to regain their balance.

MOM growled at the delay, clenching her fists, and those on the ground scrambled hastily to their feet. One of the guards, a tall man with dark hair, rushed to open the office doors, grinning nervously, apologetically, at his superior.

Danny walked and Phantom floated, everyone else following after them, into the bright, curiously wall-less room, staring around in awe.

MOM crossed the room and sat behind her desk, drumming her fingers impatiently on the tabletop as everyone followed.

The twelve guards spread themselves around the room as Danny, Danny, and Martin sank nervously into the three chairs situated opposite the dark-hair woman's desk.

"From the beginning, Agent Mystery," she demanded, silver eyes flashing as she glared at him.

"Okay, from 'tonight' beginning, or 'after we left your office' beginn-?"

MOM snarled and all but gouged several chunks from the tabletop. Martin felt the blood drain from his face, and hurriedly launched into a summary of the last few days, his first words slurring together before his mouth caught up with his mind,

"Diana and I went to the Parc la Fontaine where we found some blood that started turning into ectoplasm. We couldn't figure it out and the bio-scan was useless, so we left to interview the other witness, Kelly. Diana talked to her while I searched the area she said her father had disappeared from. I found more blood-ectoplasm and sent a sample to Billy before it could change.

"After we left Kelly, Billy popped out of an alleyway to tell us he couldn't find anything and all of a sudden, Phantom fell out of the sky. He offered to help us with our mission but he didn't know anything more than we did, so we all went home.

"The next day, Phantom shows up sometime after first period and takes Diana on a date-"

"Date!" said ghost cut in; "It wasn't-!"

He was silenced as MOM's furious expression transferred to him. Honestly, he wasn't sure how Martin could talk at all with that look fixed on him; Sam's angry face wasn't half so disturbing.

"Continue, Martin," the woman ordered.

At least she was using his first name, Martin mentally sighed before complying, "and so she comes back just before sunset all happy and finally convinced that Danny, er, _Phantom_ not Fenton…but yeah, Fenton too…uh, Diana's on Phantom's side now! A-anyway somehow we got thinking about why Phantom was all the way in Quebec instead of back protecting Amity Park, which upset Danny 'cause we thought maybe Phantom was stalking him…Just after Danny left there was a flash of green and a portal opened up in the middle of my room and sucked Diana in! I would've gone in too except that Danny heard Diana scream and ran back in to help us…"

MOM sat silent, legs crossed, fingers quietly, absently, drumming the table as her gaze flicked between her agent and the two outsiders. After a few moments, during which the three boys stared nervously back, waiting anxiously for what the woman would do next, the Centre's leader met the eyes of two of the guards and nodded wordlessly to them.

The two white-suited men saluted, turning in synch and departing through the only physical door to the office.

MOM stood up, pushing herself to her feet with both hands flat on the desk, keeping her head bowed. Dramatically, she looked up to fix the oddly tanned ghost with an emotionless stare,

"I'll have you know that I don't trust ghosts or monsters in the slightest. But this is an interracial organization and it is my duty as its head to give you the benefit of the doubt. As of this moment I do not have any jurisdiction over you, but if you wish to keep your afterlife and what little trust I am willing to give you, you will accompany Martin on his mission and bring _both_ my agents back alive and whole. Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal," Phantom said, eyes wide.

MOM turned to the other Danny, "You're Jack and Maddie Fenton, ghost hunters' son?"

He nodded furiously.

The pale woman let her lips curl up into a barely noticeable smirk at his reaction. "I trust you have the right gear?" she asked, indicating the lumpy, oversized bag at his feet.

Again, Danny nodded.

"Good. Then you-"

Everyone turned to face the door as the two guards from earlier reentered the room, each carrying an identical white box. Wordlessly, they placed their packages on MOM's desk and returned to their previous positions. The dark haired woman took one of the boxes in her hand, walked around the desk, and came to stand before the dark haired boy,

"-are going to need one of these. You'll be keeping an eye on your ghost friend I trust."

She lifted the top off the box, holding it out for Danny to take. Inside, resting in on a black foam blanket lay a green and blue watch identical to the one Martin normally wore.

Danny looked at it for a second, then up at the lady in front of him, "Me?"

"Yes, you." the woman said, her tone surprisingly patient.

Tentatively, as if fearing some kind of trap, the not-so-teenage-human boy reached up and plucked the Watch from its safe nest.

"Martin can show you how it works." Without turning around, she preemptively answered the blonde's question, "Yours is on the desk."

MOM's smile went unnoticed as she watched the blue eyed boy strap the Centre's most useful field gadget on his wrist, his eyes lighting up like those of a child on Christmas day. "Wow, thank you!" he said, looking up.

MOM's face was once again free of emotion as she nodded, crossing back behind her desk and slipping regally into her chair. "Unfortunately, my knowledge of the Ghost Zone is limited to taunts from across the battlefield. Where do I open a portal, Mr. Fenton?"

"FentonWorks," was the instant reply from two separate mouths, voices identical but for the echo of the one.

MOM raised an eyebrow skeptically at the ghost, before turning her attention to his human half, "What's in FentonWorks? Why not directly into the Zone?"

"Doesn't work like that. Ghost portal," was the dual reply.

The pale woman bristled. "Would you stop that?" she snapped at Phantom.

"Sorry?" he said, trying to look apologetic despite the confusion on his face.

Martin was grinning as MOM shook her head, eyes closed as she frowned, and opened a watery blue portal in the middle of the room. The three boys stood up, Fenton lugging the oversized weapons bag with him, and all three slipped through the gateway, leaving one exasperated director to dismiss her guards as she sighed in relief.

* * *

**_Everything made sense?  
_**

**_Everyone's in character?_**

**_And as for the elevator thing...you try fitting 15 people plus a giant suitcase in that thing! There's just enough room for Martin, Diana, Java, and Billy to move comfortably in it...Sorry._**


	7. Chapter 7

_**'Kay, try to ignore that previous posting...I rewrote the chapter because things were...not right. Everything's the same until they start talking about Jazz. I've split it in two too. But the next 'part' should be rewritten for sometime tomorrow :)  
**_

* * *

_**The Centre **_

Mystery Organization Manager. MOM.

That title meant something to her, gave her responsibility. It meant she would do what the job required, and do what was necessary to protect her agents. At any cost.

The pale, dark-haired woman sat at her desk, tapping her fingers on the tabletop, her legs crossed as she stared at the purple door on the other side of the room.

The office was empty, the guards having been dismissed when the portal closed and the possible ghost threat removed from the building.

MOM glanced down at the screen built into her desk, pressed a button on the side that transferred the relatively small images from the monitor into floating, movable holograms. Studying the three semi-transparent boxes of information, the Centre's director hummed to herself, sitting back in her stiff-backed chair and clicking her fingers on the desk once more.

The screen in the center was the least complicated. A live video feed hacked from the cameras strategically placed by the Fenton parents around their lab. MOM shook her head with a disgusted sigh; those cameras had been too easily broken into. There were so few firewalls in place that any simple teenager with a PDA could have turned them to their uses, which was probably why the cameras had been stuck replaying old recordings. Currently, the feed she was receiving showed an annoyingly familiar blonde teenager, and too nearly identical black and white haired ones, moving about that lab.

MOM narrowed her eyes, and let her gaze shift to the far right screen. Slightly more complicated, but not quite as simple as the other two displays; this had one image surrounded by multiple points of data. The image was human shaped and familiar, having left her office only minutes ago.

Danny Fenton.

Frustration bit into her as her eyes flicked across the different data being offered. Martin had made an obvious mistake, one she would forcibly remind him of within the next few minutes.

The U-Watch was more than a tool to be handed out on a whim. It was given to tested, certifiable agents who had proven skill and loyalty towards the Centre and its purposes.

Her (secretly) favoured agent had not called her out on that, but she supposed he had more pressing thoughts than 'formalities' at this point, what with Diana being lost somewhere in the Ghost Zone.

"Hmm," MOM's brow furrowed as she looked at Fenton's readings. His brain pattern was steady but stressed, his energy levels stable but showing some exertion, his body temperature slightly below normal.

The dark-haired director pressed another few buttons on the desktop-mounted monitor. There was beep as the communications channel opened, and another levitating, holographic image shimmered into existence above her desk.

"What's up, MOM?" asked Billy's green, casual, ever-smiling face.

"Billy," the stern, permanently scowling woman greeted, "have you made any progress pinpointing Diana's location?"

"Yep. In fact, I was just about to call you. I've got the signal from Martin's U-Watch locked into the satellite for you, though it is a bit weird seeing as it's in another dimension and all, but once Martin's in there it should work alright."

"Good work, Billy. Now, I need you in my office," silver eyes flicked to the last screen, "and take an inter-office portal. It's faster."

Seconds later, a small, square hole was ripped through space and the tiny green alien shape-shifter emerged. Hovering on his standard flying-saucer-like ship, Billy zoomed up to MOM's side, his gaze questioning.

The director simply focused her attention on the last of the three panels.

"If anyone else approaches," she said, gesturing to the satellite-provided infrared image of the FentonWorks building, "open a portal and get Martin out of there."

Mystery Organization Manager. MOM.

It meant she would do what was necessary to protect her agents. Be it warping them out of a situation liable to get them killed or exposed, or ripping apart carefully constructed falsehoods.

With that thought in mind, MOM pulled open the drawer of her desk and withdrew a simple, blue device that looked like a highly technological camping flashlight, extending a small antennae from the top*.

_**FentonWorks Lab**_

Walking into the Fenton's basement for the first time was something of a novelty, Danny reflected, peeking sideways at the gob-smacked look on the blonde agent's face. He smirked at the piles of carelessly tossed aside inventions, boxes of spare parts, and vials filled with thick, glowing substances. Yep, home sweet home.

"Woah…cool! Look at all this stuff!" Martin inched closer to one of the cluttered desks, hands held out before him, fingers itching toward the closest gadget. "When you said your parents were ghost hunters I never expected this... These are amazing!"

"Don't even think about it." Phantom said, hovering over the spikey-haired blonde, arms crossed over his chest as he floated horizontally to peer into suspiciously innocent brown eyes. "Anything and everything in here is liable to explode, and I don't feel like being vaporized today."

"What?" Martin pouted, "I'm careful. 'Careful' is my middle name!"

Danny rolled his eyes, "I'm sure it is. You may be a secret agent with some high tech gadgets, but nothing is quite like a Fenton invention."

"Yeah," Phantom chimed in with a smirk, eyeing the Maddie Modulator, "Especially when it comes to names."

"Fine," Martin huffed, crossing his arms over his chest, "Fine, whatever. So now what?"

"That," said Fenton, stooping to zip open the heavy suitcase he'd dragged from his room, "Is what we have to figure out. I have some basic gadgets in here, but nothing to really make a different if we're going to be infiltrating a ghost's lair _inside_ the Ghost Zone. We need to stock up on the lightest but more effective weapons…and we need to find the keys to the Spectre Speeder."

"The…what?"

"That thing," Phantom said, spinning the blonde around to face the vaguely bullet-shaped vehicle hovering in an out of the way corner of the lab. "And if you accidentally launch it into the Ghost Zone, I'm sending you in alone to get it."

"Uh?" Martin turned to the ghost with fearful eyes, stopped surprised to see him trying not to laugh.

"Geez, I'm just kidding. Don't worry."

"Hey, guys? Focus!" Danny waved them over. "Okay, so I've got some Specter Deflectors, the Ghost Gauntlets, some ecto-bazookas, a Thermos, and the Portable Ghost Portal..." Mini arsenal indeed, he scoffed mentally. Then again, when you had ghost powers you didn't need all that many artificial weapons. "What else do we need?"

"Hmm…"Phantom crossed his arms, lifting one hand to rub his chin as he thought through any of the various gadgets in the lab that would aid a three (two) person invasion of the Ghost Zone.

Martin's eyebrows rose, he swung his head back and forth, searching for anything that looked remotely offensive. A vial of ectoplasm, a wrench, some papers… His eyes landed on a rather useless looking instrument leaned against a nearby cabinet, a neatly placed label identifying it as the Fenton-

"Anti-Creep Stick?" Martin wondered, picking up the otherwise ordinary bat.

Danny sighed, leaning back on his heels, still crouched over the weapons bag, "As odd as it sounds, it's actually come in handy a few times."

"In ghost fighting? It's just a bat."

"A bat with the word 'Fenton' in front of it," Phantom pointed out, rolling his eyes, "and that makes all the difference to Jack. But no, Danny's parents use it to scare away any creep brave enough to try a move on Jazz."

"Jazz? I thought Diana said that you said you were an only child?"

What? Darn it! It was like the first year with his powers all over again…lies upon lies upon half-truths until someone said the wrong thing and the whole story fell apart, everyone left in awkward suspicion to figure out what was what!

"Uh…Jazz is my cousin? …Adopted? Yeah, she's adopted! So she's not _technically_ my-"

Martin folded his arms over his chest, glaring, silently demanding answers.

Danny let his breath out in a huff, "Fine. Jazz is my sister, I lied. But…in my defense, things have happened before…and I just met you guys…" He avoided looking at the blonde agent, staring instead at his sneakers.

Phantom hovered awkwardly in the background. "Oops…" he mumbled under his breath.

Fenton shot him a glare sideways through his bangs before turning his attention back to Martin.

"So I lied, big deal! You lied about that guidance appointment, _and_ the Watch, _and_ being a secret agent!" he counter-accused.

"I had an actual secret to protect!" Martin replied indignantly. "What did you think we were gonna do? Kidnap your sister and hold her ransom?"

"No! Even if that has happened before… Diana caught me off guard!"

"Uh, guys?" Phantom hovered closer, trying hard to reject half of his emotions, the ones tied to Fenton, and remain objective. "Speaking of Diana, shouldn't we be trying to find her? Seeing as, you know, _she was_ kidnapped and all?"

The ghost looked startled as brown and blue glares turned to him, resisted the urge to turn invisible to escape their ferocity. He shrugged nervously at them, as in 'see my point?'

Martin and Danny both crossed their arms over their chests, huffing, and turned away from each other.

Phantom sighed, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. '_Dramatic pouting,'_ he thought_, 'What are you, like, five?'_

'_Shut up!'_ growled the defensive thought that was both his and…not.

Shrugging jumpsuit-clad shoulders and ignoring his other hallf, the ghost flew over to the Centre agent whose glare was diminishing somewhat as he stared curiously at the closed doors of the ghost portal. Phantom moved to hover in front of him, ghostly tail brushing the floor, startling the agent into the here and now.

"Diana _is_ waiting, and she could be in a lot of trouble. Look, Danny has his secrets just like we have ours, just like everyone else has theirs. What's done is done, but what hasn't been done yet is use saving Diana. Now, I've been thinking, you have a choice between the Fenton Wrist Rays and Maddie's Laser Lipstick." He smiled hopefully at the blonde.

Martin chuckled humorlessly, "Not much of choice. I'll take the wrist thing."

Phantom grinned, motioned him to follow and led the blonde over to a cluttered counter where he began to dig cautiously through piles of anti-ghost junk.

"Here," Fenton muttered grudgingly as he walked over, holding out a handful of green earphones.

Martin took two, staring suspiciously at the little devices.

Turning to hold the Wrist Ray up victoriously, glowing green eyes caught sight of the little scene in front of him. Phantom groaned, expression dropping to tired frustration at his childish accomplices. White gloved fingers took two more Fenton Phones from the hand of his other half, positioned them nicely in his ears.

"They're just headphones, Martin. They'll filter out spectral noise to allow us to communicate. Put them on unless you'd rather have your mind controlled by the first malicious ghost we encounter."

Martin fit the 'Phones onto his ear, accepted the Wrist Ray Phantom handed him, strapping it on his right arm. "Okay," he said, "now what?"

"Now," Fenton started, "we-"

"_Hide!"_ Martin raised his Watch to see Billy's anxious face on the screen, _"Martin, you gotta get out of there, now! I've got three heat signatures heading into FentonWorks. They shouldn't find you!"_

"Got it, Billy!" Martin dropped his hand as the screen went black, looked up to identical, nervous gazes.

Three pairs of eyes scanned the spacious lab with its rather upsetting lack of hiding places.

"The Spectre Speeder! Go!" Fenton hissed as the sound of a bolt being unlatched echoed through the basement.

They ran as quietly as possible, trying to prevent any revealing echoes from travelling up the stairs.

"Why are _you_ hiding, they're your parents!" Martin whispered.

"Too many awkward questions, like why I'm home and why I didn't call them first!"

Distantly, they heard several voices, the words ominously clear. The boys froze.

"Jack, dear, could you come back out and help me unload the RV? Val, you can put those samples in lab, please."

"Sure thing, Mrs. Fenton."

Danny and Phantom shared a worried look. _"Valerie?"_ they mouthed to each other.

The footsteps approached the stairs.

"The weapons bag!" Fenton gasped, lurching back across the lab. He snatched at the strap, dragging the bag toward the Speeder.

The footsteps were on the stairs, closer and closer. Martin judged the distance between Danny and himself. He wasn't going to make it. And then he realized _he_ was standing out in the open too! Where the heck was the door on this thing?

Phantom grabbed his shoulder, cold fingers digging painfully into his flesh, a kind of hollow feeling spreading out from the point of contact just as a young woman in a red jumpsuit stepped into the lab.

She gasped, nearly dropping the sealed vials of glowing ectoplasm held in her hands. _"Danny?"_

Fenton looked up nervously, dropped the bag of anti-ghost weapons at his feet as he flashed the woman a guilty smile. "Hey, Val. Long time no see."

"What are you doing here? Why didn't you call?" Valerie Grey wondered, looking stunned.

Again, these were the questions he'd been hoping to avoid. "Oh, y'know, same old same old…I was busy, didn't want to interrupt you guy- Ack!"

He squirmed as the taller woman dragged him into a hug. "Oh, it's so good to see you again!" she gushed, "Look at you; you look like you could still be in high school!"

"Val…can't breathe!" Danny wheezed.

She released him, stepping back, grinning ear to ear. Danny shot a nervous glance toward where his duplicate was keeping Martin invisible. Hopefully he wouldn't question that age comment.

"So? What's up? Did ya miss me?" Valerie nudged the other boy in the ribs with her elbow, walked around him to set down the ghostly samples she was still carrying. She turned, leaning against the cluttered bench and crossing her legs.

Danny rubbed the spot on his ribs, playfully glaring at the girl who was also the Red Huntress and, at one point, his nemesis. Valerie still didn't trust Phantom (not that she knew who he really was) but they'd agreed to a sort of truce after they'd worked together to rescue Dani from Vlad and she'd discovered their half-ghost status. It still didn't mean Danny wasn't cautious around her.

"I don't know, Val," he looked pointedly at his chest, "the near constant maiming isn't hard miss."

The red-suited woman swatted playfully at his head, "Jerk."

He grinned, though it didn't quite reach his eyes. How was he supposed to get rid of Valerie without triggering her ghost-hunting instincts, appear to be brushing her off, or letting his parents know he was here? He glanced nervously at a spot in front of the Spectre Speeder; was aware of Martin nodding in understanding through his link to Phantom.

"Look, Val, there's something I gotta do, that's why I didn't call ahead. Please-"

"Valerie? Is everything all right down there?" Maddie Fenton's voice called from the top of the stairs.

"Yeah, Mrs. Fenton! I was just-" Valerie blinked, cutting herself off. She whipped her head around, searching the now empty lab in shock. Where-?

She spotted the tail end of the Spectre Speeder disappearing into the swirling green of the Fenton's Ghost Portal, Danny Fenton pushing the hovering vehicle from behind. He turned back to mouth 'Sorry' before jumping into the Portal himself. The emergency doors slammed shut behind him.

"Wait!" Valerie lurched toward the portal, one hand reaching out uselessly as if to grab him back.

She stopped herself from grabbing the nearest ecto-bazooka and jumping in after him. They weren't fourteen any more, however young Danny might look to her, and he knew more about the Zone than anyone she'd ever encountered. He'd be fine, she tried to reassure herself.

"Valerie, dear, is everything okay?" Maddie poked her head into the lab, looking questioningly at the Red Huntress.

"Yeah, Mrs. F. Everything's perfect." Valerie sighed, stealing one last look at the sealed portal before following the older woman back upstairs.

* * *

**_...Everything will be explained. I got this under control now (now that its not 2 o'clock in the morning anyway...).  
_**


	8. Chapter 8

**_*headdesk*_**

* * *

Phantom held open the door of the Spectre Speeder as his human half scrambled inside.

Okay, so maybe chucking Martin intangibly through the side of the Speeder while simultaneously-as-another-person rushing to push the bullet-shaped vehicle into the Zone wasn't the best idea, but desperate times called for desperate measures. He couldn't let his parents know he was back. Not only would they ask a bunch of questions he probably wouldn't be able answer, but they would be wasting his time with introductions to the just-young-enough-to-maybe-make-this-a-little-weird teenager he was hanging around with. And as he had no idea of Diana's current situation, he couldn't afford to waste much time.

Phantom stuck his head through the metal siding, looking back at the blocked Portal; at least Val hadn't followed them. Yet.

Pushing black hair out of his eyes, Danny climbed into the front, shooing Martin out of the driver's seat. He took the controls, switched the throttle to Full, froze in shock; two sets of half-ghost eyes rolled in exasperation before Fenton grabbed the Vlad Masters bobble head from the dashboard and threw it carelessly into the back. Phantom 'accidently' hit it with an ecto-beam.

In the passenger's seat, Martin gaped at his first view of the Ghost Zone, swinging his head around so fast Danny worried he might get whiplash.

"This place is awesome!" he said, eyeing several free floating chunks of rock and all the hundreds of doors hiding ghosts' lairs. Not to mention the endless slime.

"Creepy," Danny maintained. All these years after his first trip into the Ghost Zone, he still got a bad feeling whenever he went in here. But then again, that could simply be the fact that nearly every one of his multitude of enemies resided in this one place.

"If you say so." Martin replied, totally at odds with Danny's statement. Up, down, left, right…everywhere he looked there were doors, doors, and more doors. To think that each lead to a different ghost's lair! How cool would that be, to have your own personal world designed as you willed it?

He turned to ask Phantom, hovering in the back of the Speeder, if he had a door too when the obvious struck him in the face with a metaphorical frying pan. Martin blinked, stunned.

"If each of these doors goes to another ghost's personal dimension, how are we ever gonna find Di? She could be anywhere! Billy," he said impatiently into his U-Watch, "those coordinates would be a big help now!"

The little alien's image came through all jumpy and static-prone, "-otcha, Marty. Send…-ignal now. But it's hard- …much interference."

"Here," Fenton said, indicating a small slot on the dashboard, "Can you plug that in here? I can use the Speeder's radio to boost the signal. It was designed to work through the Ghost Zone."

Martin nodded, extending a short cord from his U-Watch and plugging it into the dashboard. Danny pressed another few buttons and Billy's image was suddenly clear.

"Try it now, Billy." Fenton offered.

"Right. Now, all you gotta do is head…"

**0o0o**

The school was bright, much too bright, and far too warm with the press of humanity coming from all sides. The press…the stench of humanity was nothing like her beloved Ghost Zone; endless, dark, and wonderfully cold. How she longed to return! But she had a mission…

Several people greeted her with a cheery, "Hey, Diana," as she wandered through the halls. At first she had been alarmed that these humans had seen through her disguise so quickly, but then she realized that the face she had borrowed must also bear her name. To each of these mortals she posed the same question, and from each she received the same infuriating answer. She turned to climb the stairs, hoping the new level might bring some sensible (_hah!_) humans who could give her what she wanted, when a new voice called her name.

This one was different. Not greeting, but calling for attention. She slowed, turning to wait as a tall-ish redhead in a black dress and knee-high boots ran up to her.

"Diana! You're not gonna _believe_ what happened! So there I was, minding my own business, when Jared-!"

"Do you know where Danny Phantom is?"

"Uh…who?"

"Daniel Fenton," she said slowly, glaring at the human girl, "Do you know where Danny Fenton is?"

"No. I though he was with you? I haven't seen him since last night. Wait! Where are you going?"

Walking away from the redhead, she stopped the first person she saw, a tall brunette boy with a letterman jacket, and demanded an answer to her question.

"Nope, last I saw he was hanging out with that loser, Martin, yesterday."

Her hands balled into fists, tiny wisps of ecto-energy danced to life around her fingers. How could one half-human child be so hard to find! Or was it just that these humans were too blind to notice what went on around them? She needed to find the halfa! She needed to find him, _now!_ He was the binding agent…!

Obviously, her searching for him was futile. These humans were idiots. And he would only sense her coming.

She eyed the redheaded girl giving her a concerned look. Inspiration.

Yes. That would do. Every citizen of the 'Zone knew the halfa protected those humans what dwelled in his haunt… All she had to do…

Gathering the energies around her she lifted off the ground, absently reveling in the gasps and screams this elicited, and focused on the 'Zone. She calmly placed her hands against the air in front of her as the humans in the hallway scrambled away, and tore her way into the ghosts' dimension.

She waited until those in the immediate vicinity were swallowed by the glowing portal before travelling through herself, satisfied that the halfa would not let this pass his notice.

**0o0o**

Diana sighed, gently pushing off the wall of the cell she was trapped in. She bounced back, floating into the centre of the room, throwing her hands out to steady herself.

Ghost Zone. Wasn't all that exciting after a few hours, not once you learned how to keep yourself from flipping upside down and got used to the cold.

The cell wasn't very big, or very well lit. Or very, well…anything! No one had been in to threaten or taunt her, no creepy aliens or ghosts, no spilling of plans for world domination…this was probably the most boring kidnapping she'd been through yet. Why was she complaining?

Diana rubbed the chilly, bare skin of her wrist, wishing she had Martin's U-Watch back. MOM could probably trace her regardless (she had their minds on backup, it was more than likely she'd snuck on some kind of tracker, right?) but the Watch made her feel safer. And, to be truthful, it could be very useful in cutting her way out of here…

She crossed her arms over her chest, simultaneously wishing something would happen and that everything would stay calm and peaceful. And then she knew. It was exactly that rule about saying it couldn't get any worse! She tensed, eyes going wide-

Nothing.

Seconds passed. Her heartrate slowed. 'Get a hold of yourself, Di. Just 'cause it always _seems_ to happen doesn't mean- _GYAAAH!_"

There was a flash of light behind her. A brief flare of brighter green-yellow and a strong wind and then something hit her. Suddenly, she wasn't the only one screaming.

Diana whipped around, raising her arms protectively over her face, waiting for the universe to deliver her her punishment for wishing something would happen. Between slitted eyes she glimpsed familiar red hair.

"Jenny?"

Whimpering, the other girl peeked grey-blue eyes around slim fingers. "Diana?"

"Jenny! But- How did you get here? Are you alright? What happened?"

Jenny stared for a moment, slowly lowering her arms. "Is it really you, Di? You're not that…monster?"

"Monster? What are talking about? Of course it's me!" Diana blinked innocent green eyes at her, frowning at the fact that Jenny was cowering away from her. "Are you alright?"

"Am I alright? _Of course_ I'm not al_right_! You," she said, glaring, pointing a shaking finger across the murky cell, "went three types of crazy back at school! The questions, the floating, the…mystical-y, swirly portal-y thing! And now I'm _here_! And I don't know where 'here' is and I wanna go home, back to Torrington where things used to be _sane_! Where people don't glow!"

Wait, what? "Floating? Portals? Glowing?"

"Yes, glowing! Look at you! So don't act like you know me, you…imposter! I want _my_ Diana, my friend back, so tell me where she is or I'll…I'll…"

Confused, Diana looked at her hands. They _were_ glowing! What…was going on? Bright green eyes flicked up to meet shining grey. "Jenny, it is me. There was a portal in Martin's room too. It sucked me in here last night, you gotta believe me! You need to stay calm and help me find a way out of here. Martin's on his way, I hope. Maybe we can meet him before he meets whatever put us in here."

The redhead hiccoughed, "But how will he know where we are? _We_ don't even know where we are!"

**0o0o**

His heart was beating too fast, his head was throbbing, and he felt kind of rubbery. None of which helped in the current situation.

"_Billy!_" Martin cried, grabbing the edges of his seat, anything that seemed stable, "I think you got the wrong coordinates!"

'No kidding,' Danny thought, glancing past his scowling reflection to the snapping teeth of the large black dragon closing in on the Spectre Speeder. He pushed in on the controls, making the ship duck, narrowly avoiding the ball of green fire Aragon had spat at them.

"I will have you this time, you arrogant brat! No one escapes Prince Aragon!"

"Urgh! Persistence _must_ be a trait you get when you die! Why don't _any_ of them give up?" Phantom groaned from the back. "How many times have we kicked his butt, now? I don't even remember why he's angry this time!"

"Either than or he's simply pig-headed." Fenton muttered, jerking the Speeder to the side as Aragon lunged again.

Billy's worried face was framed on a small screen covering a quarter of the windshield. He flinched every time the dragon's ugly snout reared into view, a habit that was fast becoming unbearable to both halves of Danny.

"Sorry Marty," the green alien tittered, tiny beads of sweat appearing on his forehead as he punched numbers into a keyboard in a safe office a whole dimensional plane away. "Some of the rules don't apply when you cross dimensions. Heh, my mistake."

Phantom stared at the tiny agent, annoyed. _They_ were fleeing the dragon, _he_ was flinching. _They _were going to be eaten, _he_ was rubbing the back of his neck and laughing!

"How about you just find us a new flight plan? To Diana this time please?" Danny not-quite hissed between his teeth.

Billy looked startled. Martin looked back at Phantom, mostly curious but ready to argue in his friend's defence.

"What? In case you hadn't noticed, we're being chased by a giant dragon who's been building a grudge against me for years. And while he's easy to beat once you get that necklace off, he's still quite dangerous."

"Hmmph," Martin smirked, looking past Fenton to the ghostly dragon hurtling along beside them, "doesn't look so tough."

"Believe what you want…" He wasn't quite sure which copy of him had spoken or if he'd even spoken out loud. Danny's eyes dropped almost shut, Phantom staggered sideways, half floating.

"Hey!" the blonde grabbed the controls, yanking down the side closest to him. The Speeder twisted right seconds before Aragon's teeth snapped shut on the space they'd just been occupying. "What's wrong? Danny?"

Blue and green eyes blinked, black and white hair shook out the confusion.

What was going on? Why was he feeling like this?

Too long. He'd been two people for almost twenty-four hours. And he'd gotten very little sleep the night before…

Okay, so don't even think of an excuse, just do it! Phantom jumped, diving intangibly into his other half, melting into a single person. Being one person again was like a breath of fresh air, a cool glass of water on a hot day. He felt reinvigorated, complete. The headache vanished, his limbs steadied, his anger defused. He dodged Aragon again, pushing the Speeder down and around to follow behind the dragon instead of being chased by it.

Danny glanced sideways. Yup, wide brown eyes were staring into his, broadcasting a whole range of emotions: horror, distrust, confusion, surprise.

"Phantom? What-?"

Lies, lies, and more lies. But the truth was not an option. "If I described Danny as having 'fits' and becoming incapacitated for a while, would you believe me? It's a system: he hides me, I keep him alive" (which was all too true in the physical perspective).

"Does he know you do that? Possess him all the time?" Martin's right hand was hovering near the Watch on his left wrist.

"Are you going to believe me if I say yes?" Danny blinked at the other, honestly wondering. "But either way, Danny will be fine for the next while unless Aragon gets us. So here's the plan: We'll distract him, you fly the Speeder up close and grab that necklace off of him. He'll be next to harmless without it, though sticking around him wouldn't exactly be fun, so then we turn around and check out Billy's new coordinates. Got it?"

Martin was still eyeing him suspiciously, but the blonde nodded nonetheless.

Danny called up his ghost powers and phased through the back of the seat as Martin climbed over to the driver's side. He stood in the back of the Speeder for a moment, debating whether or not to just grab a gun before deciding not to bother. He phased half way out of the side of the Speeder, keeping only a sliver of his middle and arm intangible so he could grab a handhold and not fall out.

With only some resistance from his human form Danny charged an ecto-ball in his fist and launched it at the great dragon swivelling his head to look for them. The blast caught him on the chin and Aragon roared in surprise, his head whipping around to lock eyes with the halfa.

"You shall mock me no more, you idiot half-breed! My power far exceeds your own! You shall not win this time!"

"Dream on, Scaly! I've learned a few things over the years. Like this!" Letting the Speeder pass through him as Martin drove it around behind Aragon, Danny clapped his hands together and then let them move apart as a large snowball materialized in his palms.

The dragon sucked in a great breath as Danny threw the snowball towards him, melting it with fire before it got too close. He shot another breath of flame at the half-ghost, snarling as the little pest simply phased through it. Aragon roared as he was hit by a double volley of ecto-blasts, all aimed at his wings. He folded the smoking appendages close to his body, not really needing them to fly in the faulty gravity of the Ghost Zone, and glared menacingly at the halfa.

"You will pay for that," he said angrily, right before he charged.

Danny ducked, avoiding the dragon's jaws, and spiraled along his purple and black scaled length, casually firing ecto-beams as he passed. "As long as you don't charge interest, Aragon, 'cause it looks like you'll have to wait." he quipped.

Aragon spun around, glaring his hatred through narrowed red eyes. So the halfa didn't even think he was worthy of changing into his ghost self? He'd show him! He'd tear that little freak apart limb by limb!

Hmm…was that infernal machine trying to sneak up on him? He didn't recognize the driver…Wait a moment.

Something clicked. Aragon's lips curled back over menacing incisors as he smirked, eyeing the human in the ship.

"So, halfa," he called, "afraid to show your true self around this new human? I'll force to reveal yourself! Then I'll have won! Whether you beat me or not!"

He lunged, hurtling himself toward the half-ghost. Just as he thought the boy turned intangible, allowing him free passage to the ship! Smashing his hand through the window and tearing off the door simply to create as much damage as possible, Aragon grabbed the new human out of his seat, locking him within his claws.

The human struggled, mumbling curses, trying to wriggle his arms free. Aragon laughed, squeezing his hands tighter until the boy choked, before giving him slack and turning to face the halfa. Who suddenly wasn't there.

"What?" That went completely against this character! Everyone knew how the halfa risked his neck to save his humans. He was up to something…he had to be!

Martin gagged in the dragon's grip, fighting to get his arms where he could use them. As Aragon frowned into the green distance of the Ghost Zone and checked over his shoulder in case Danny reappeared, he managed to get his left hand loose. He stopped to watch as a small bolt of green ectoplasm materialized from thin air and burned into the dragon's tail, gasped as its pain reflex tightened its fists.

"There you are!" Aragon breathed deep, launching a ball of flame at his invisible quarry.

Martin wriggled his other arm free, reaching for his left wrist even as he waited anxiously for Danny to get hit.

"_U-Watch activated. Turbo-bungee selected."_

"Hmm?" Aragon turned to look as the small grapple hook shot out and wrapped itself around the amulet hanging on his neck.

Martin pressed another button on the Watch to recall the bungee and heard a satisfying _snap_ as the necklace came with it. "Hah! Not so tough now are ya?"

"No!" Aragon snatched at the dragon-eyed amulet even as he shrunk down to his human form. He blanched (if ghost's can blanch) as Danny faded into view next to him, fist pulled back to strike.

_Wham! _Aragon flew backwards a few feet before turning now-metaphorical tail and fleeing back to his kingdom.

Danny flew over to Martin, "You okay? Sorry about making him choke you, I was hoping he'd drop you instead."

"No problem," Martin said, grinning as he held up the amulet. "Sorry about your ride."

Danny looked at the Speeder, its driver side door floating off in the distance. "Dad's gonna kill me for that."

"Aw, cheer up. We could still die before that trying to rescue Diana!"

Danny rolled his eyes before grabbing Martin by the arm and floating them over to the damaged ship. As he powered up the Speeder, Martin called up Billy again, gratefully receiving the new coordinates the tiny green alien was _sure_ were right this time.

* * *

**_I underestimated the effects of the grade twelve year on the teenage brain... ._**

**_(By the way, someone other than me realizes that DP uses monster roars from Godzilla: The Series for various ghosts right? Aragon, the hydra in Japan during 'Reality Trip,' etc...)  
_**


	9. Chapter 9

Valerie paced circles across Danny's old room, staring at the wallpaper and furniture that had been left behind in case he ever decided to visit Amity again. All except for a few posters, the room looked exactly as it had since Danny had turned fourteen. Something was nagging at the back of her mind as she passed under the mobile universe again.

Danny _had_ visited Amity Park again, he just hadn't told anyone he was coming. The only reason _she_ knew was because she had caught him down in the lab looking for all the world like he wished he could turn invisible. He'd stayed just long enough to tell her that he had something important to do before stealing the Specter Speeder and disappearing into the Ghost Portal. Alone. Into the Ghost Zone.

Valerie sank onto the bed, staring at her reflection in the mirror, battling some protective instinct that wanted very much to rush after him with the biggest bazooka she could find. He'd never taken formal lessons in ghost hunting, all he'd taken, as far as she had seen, was one small knapsack that wouldn't have been able to hold very many weapons, and he looked fragile enough to be pushed over in the wind!

He'd always looked like that though. She guessed it was just something he'd never grown out of.

Valerie blinked. Grown out of, as in, gotten older.

She jumped off the bed, crossing to the mirror in two short steps and leaning into the reflective glass.

Twenty-one, that's how old she was, how old Danny was…should have been! She'd said it herself, that he still looked high school age, he looked at least sixteen or seventeen. Which meant…that wasn't Danny Fenton.

Bolting through the door, Valerie sprinted for the Ops Centre, for the computer that monitored all the video cameras in and around FentonWorks.

**0o0o**

Danny sucked a breath in through his teeth, clenching and unclenching his fingers on the Specter Speeder's control.

Ooh yeah, this was awkward. Flying through the Ghost Zone with a paranormal investigator whose job was to protect humans from supernatural creatures when he thought you were possessing yourself and you couldn't tell him because his mom would rip you apart molecule by molecule…yup. Definitely awkward.

"So…" Danny asked, trying to sound offhand while looking over his shoulder at the blonde Centre agent who was studiously ignoring his gaze, "how's it goin'?"

Wow, Danny thought to himself, it would almost have been less lame to comment on the weather, not that the Ghost Zone had weather…just endless green…but the uncomfortable silence that had settled over the Speeder since the incident with Aragon was starting to get to him.

Danny had helped Martin navigate the weightlessness of the open Ghost Zone, the agent had asked to study Aragon's pendant, went into the back, and they hadn't said another word to each other. He knew it was because Martin thought Phantom was overshadowing Fenton, even though Danny had simply reabsorbed his ghostly duplicate. He would have gladly copied himself except that duplication took rather more energy than he was willing to use up on his way to fight an unknown enemy of unknown strength while running on only a few hours of sleep.

There was an easier, straightforward way of going about this, but he would not, _could not_ reveal his half-ghost status to the paranormal investigator, no matter how monster-happy the blonde seemed. Who knew what kind of horrible experiments and lab tests Martin's 'mom' could unleash on him with advanced, and often alien, technology at her disposal. No, it wasn't worth the risk.

"You know that what you're doing is exactly what I'm supposed to stop, right?" Martin looked up from the Legendex to glare pointedly at the supposedly overshadowed Fenton.

Danny let his breath whistle out in a sigh as he turned to steer them around a floating violet door. "Yeah…I know."

"So what are you going to do about it?"

**0o0o**

'It hadn't worked,' she fumed, aiming an energy-encased fist at the nearest solid object. The Plexiglas window of the cage shuddered, the entire contraption sending a dull ringing through the immediate area.

Phantom hadn't taken the bait. It had been hours, he should have been here by now!

Floating up to the cage that held two of the human girls she'd taken from that ugly building they called a 'school,' she went over the plan again, wondering where she could have gone wrong.

Phantom had been with the brown haired girl during the day and had been in the same room with her and some other insignificant human that evening. She had assumed that that meant he would care about her at least to some degree, but if he wasn't here by now…

Perhaps she had been wrong. Phantom hadn't been in his new town for long, just a few days really. He couldn't have formed too strong a bond. But he _had_ been concerned about the human girl; after all, he had tried to pull her out of the ghost portal. And then he had disappeared with that other human, gone someplace she couldn't sense him before briefly reappearing in his old town. So if he had gone home, then that meant that he _was_ coming…

But it was still taking too long! He should have been here by now! Maybe he thought her coward enough to not hurt the humans. Or perhaps…he just needed a better incentive.

**0o0o**

Slipping into a high-backed chair, Valerie typed in the security code that would allow her to access the video records for the Fenton's lab. If she were being honest, '_ectofudge_' seemed like a pretty weak password, entirely too predictable when one knew Maddie's and Jack's separate obsessions…or even the fact that Mrs. Fenton had attempted to make fudge with ecto-energies. The thought made Valerie shiver, calling up old nightmares. Maddie was a nice woman and an excellent ghost fighter but when it came to cooking…Well, suffice it to say that Valerie was surprised Danny and Jazz hadn't developed any freaky ghost diseases.

The computer beeped as it logged on, and the Red Huntress quickly opened a connection to the lab cameras. Let's see…it had been a few hours ago that Danny had left meaning…

There. An image of her and Danny in the lab, the black-haired boy, or whoever was impersonating him, running over to the Speeder…Valerie rewound the video feed, brows creasing in surprise as her blur left and two others joined Fenton in the lab. When the image was that of the empty lab she stopped reversing the video and let it play.

A glowing blue doorway, which she assumed was some kind of raw ghost portal appearing in the middle of the lab. Danny Fenton, some blonde teenager, and, there was no mistaking it, Danny _Phantom_, walking out of the portal. She watched the three guys milling about the room, Danny and Danny collecting various ghost fighting gadgets while the blonde investigated several inventions, the three freezing; Phantom zipping over to the blonde and turning them both invisible while Fenton ran back to the bag of weapons they'd gathered. When she saw herself step into view, Valerie stopped the video, leaning back in the chair.

There was no audio, so she had no idea what they were doing or what they were going to do. She didn't know why Danny was working with Phantom or who that blonde guy was or why that ghost portal was blue if it even was a ghost portal…But she hadn't found what she wanted which meant one thing: She had just bought herself a ticket to ghost central. That was of course, _after_ she made one quick call.

**0o0o**

"What's the point of giving a dangerous object to the sister of the guy who wants to use it to kill you if you know she'll eventually give it back to him?" Martin asked as he walked, hands in his pockets, along the medieval corridor with double-Danny. "Why not just keep it someplace safe where he can't use it against you?"

"Like at your Centre?" Danny wondered.

Martin nodded, staring around, paying more attention to the architecture then where they were walking. It was good thing humans phased through things in the Ghost Zone, Danny mused, as he pulled Martin out of a wall for the third time.

"Because it belongs to Dora, I guess. Well, it belongs to Aragon, but you know what I mean…I guess it's only fair. And it's not like he's that hard to beat."

"As if who is not hard to beat?" A cultured, accented voice interrupted Martin's comment as a glowing, green-skinned blonde stepped into view.

Martin blinked, tensed, unconsciously reaching for the Watch at his wrist as he sized up the new ghost. Red eyes usually meant evil, and this far into the Ghost Zone, he wasn't trusting anyone but Danny. Well, both Dannys…sort of. Phantom he was still wary of, but he wasn't counting on him betraying them...

"Dora! It's nice to see you! How are things going around here?"

"Phantom! It is a pleasure to see you again also, though I was worried when the page told me you needed to see me immediately. Has something happened? Please tell me it was not my brother."

Rolling his eyes, Danny held out the dragon amulet, stepping forward to drop it into the princess' hands. She sighed as she accepted it and Danny smirked at her response.

"I trust he did not give you too difficult a time, Phantom. You seem to be in one piece today."

Leaning in to Danny's ear, Martin whispered, "How can she tell that you're Phantom?"

Danny glanced over at Dora, glaring only a little as a warning, before turning to the Centre agent. He pointed to his face, "How's glowing green eyes for ya?"

"Oh…" Martin shrunk back as Dora stared quizzically at him and Phantom smirked from behind Fenton's lips.

"He is not…?" the dragon princess trailed off, nodding to herself. She bowed her head in silent apology to her half-human friend. "Is there nothing more I can do for you, before you leave?" she asked politely.

"Actually…" Danny said, glancing down at the Watch on his own wrist, "You wouldn't have happened to have heard about anyone kidnapping several humans lately, would you?"

**0o0o**

'Better incentive indeed,' she scoffed, wandering down the halls of the human building toward one lone room on the second floor, disguised once more as the brown-haired human girl who shared her name. What she was about to do would make him come after her faster than storm lightning to a wet metal pole.

Pausing at the end of the hallway, she tilted her head to either side, trying to decide which room belonged to the ghost boy. She smelled ozone and ectoplasm from one and figured that was the room she had ripped into before when she had stolen the girl.

Crossing to the other door, she fazed herself through, less than mindful of the handful of humans that still milled about in the hallway. She stared around at the clean room, searching with her eyes for a flash of metal, with her other senses for the trace of a nearby ghost. Ah, there it was. She picked the metal Thermos up from the floor as it rolled, momentarily intangible, out of the headboard.

Finally, with the addition of this last puzzle piece, her plan would fall into place, she would have her catalyst, and her thousand year mission could finally begin.

**0o0o**

Valerie hung up the phone, snapping the small device shut before slipping it back into her pocket. All she had to do now was change back into her jumpsuit, figure out which extra weapons she was going to carry, and find a way to track either Phantom or Fenton.

Standing up, she walked into the middle of the Ops Centre, making sure to keep her hands close to her sides. "One to the lab," she told the house. Val closed her eyes as she was sucked down by a clear plastic tube, tensing for impact. Staggering only a little after years of getting used to the Fenton's…unique way of getting around the house quickly, Val walked over to the counter where she'd set her ghost hunting gear. Slinging her pack over her shoulders, she pressed a button and waited the second it took for her jumpsuit to form around her, before turning her concerns to finding a tracker.

The Fenton Finder? Naw, that tracked _all_ ghosts and there were sure as heck gonna be a_ lot_ of ghosts in the _Ghost_ Zone.

Her own ghost tracker? No, that locked in on all the ghosts in the area as well.

And, by default, that leaves…

"The Boooo-merang," Valerie sighed. Oh well. On the bright side though, it worked. Like a lot of the Fenton's inventions didn't. And luckily enough, this one seemed to be locked into both Danny Fenton _and_ Danny Phantom, and since they were traveling together...Valerie smirked. She could only hope that the Boomerang decided to hit Phantom instead of Fenton; she'd heard it could leave quite a bruise.

Okay, ghost hunting equipment? Check.

Tracking system? Check

Partner? On the way.

Good, that meant she had a few minutes to get her mind straight about storming the Ghost Zone with only one other person in the hopes of finding a guy she had briefly dated in high school and wasn't sure was himself at the moment before he and her once-nemesis dragged that blonde teenager into whatever mission Danny had decided was too important to tell her about. Well, that, and get an aspirin for her sudden headache.

* * *

_**12:38am...don't blame me...Merry Christmas! And thanks for so many Story Alerts! You know, reviews would make an excellent Christmas present, don't'cha' think? ^^;  
**_


	10. Chapter 10

_**Um...Heh heh, 6 months, eh? ^^;**_

_**Writer's Block.  
**_

* * *

"Whoa," Danny shivered, chills crawling up his spine.

"What?" Martin sat forward, leaning into the front of the Spectre Speeder. "Is something wrong with Danny?"

"_What?_ Oh! No, he's fine."

Martin leaned back looking relieved, but faintly put out. Danny glanced at the blonde in the rearview mirror,  
"Do you just…ever get the feeling that things just got ten times worse?"

**0o0o**

Dented Thermos in hand, she made her way up the tower of cells perched on the tiny floating island she called home. She flew up to the cell that held the only human she was currently interested in. If the ghost child didn't count as 'human' that is…

It took the two human females a moment to realize that she was there. They just kept on talking, for a moment, like the oblivious idiots she'd always believed them to be. Shewatched, with a satisfied smirk, the blue-ish, spectral tail of the brunette flick back and forth in an unconscious display of her agitation. Yes, she was coming along nicely. And she served as the perfect bait at the same time. Phantom had better hurry up if she was to have any chance of surviving.

Finally, the red-head noticed her floating there and shrieked, backpedaling uselessly as she floated in open...air. The brunette who shared her name whipped around with rather more success, and propelled herself backwards into the far wall of the cage. Her eyes went wide as she stared, and her hands flew up to cover her mouth, _"Me?"_

"Hello, humans."

"Who are you?" The slightly-less-than-human brunette demanded, clenching her fists.

"I am called Diana," she said, her sneer growing impossibly wide at the hopeless confusion of the humans' faces. "But that name no longer suits me. My sister took that role long ago. I became known as Demeter to another people. I prefer this second name; it suits me better!"

"Wait," the human frowned, "Diana and Demeter as in the Roman and Greek goddesses?"

"They called us gods," the ghost smirked, "Who were we to disagree?"

The red-head managed to move herself forward a few inches, "But then…why are you, like, kidnapping people, and stuff? I mean, what did _**I**_ do!"

**0o0o**

The Centre director leaned forward, setting her elbows on the table and propping up her chin in her hands. Her face was set in a mask of cold calculation as her eyes raked the series of holographic screens set before her, studying the anomalous data displayed there.

The neural disruptor lay abandoned on the desk several inches away, not forgotten, but also not needed for the time being. She had been close to using it just a short while ago. Danny Fenton may not have been one of her agents, and he most certainly may have been on her 'suspicious' list, but he was still an innocent (at least until proven guilty) human being and therefore his safety was her responsibility.

When Phantom had possessed Fenton MOM had felt her finger twitch on the disrupter's trigger; there it was, the mistake she had been looking for. She was disappointed really. Having Phantom as an ally would have given the Centre a great opportunity to study ghosts (they had ridiculously little information), not mention, if the reports from Amity Park about him being a pro-human had turned out true, he could have made an excellent agent.

But possessing a human being like that, without provocation or even a good excuse (she didn't believe that bit about Fenton being sick at all), was something she could not and would not tolerate. It was only an unconscious glance at the transparent screens floating in front of her face that stopped her from activating the device.

Fenton's levels had stabilized. Physical and mental stress, brainwave fluctuations, body temperature, all had returned to normal levels, though his temperature was slightly below average. This information itself was not a bad thing since the readings had been approaching an uncomfortable level, but it was the situation that had MOM hesitating.

Possession was the forced physical control of a person's body, a mental subjugation of one's will. It should not have caused the reaction it had in Danny Fenton. His vitals should be rising, his mental activity increasing as he fought for control of himself again, even if, consciously, he had let Phantom in. His instinct for self-preservation should be to fight, not welcome the complete system overhaul.

MOM tapped out several commands to the false U-Watch on the holographic keyboard programmed into her desk, pausing for a moment to look through the Watch's screen as Phantom-Fenton once again steered the Spectre Speeder into the depths of the Ghost Zone. His eyes were faintly glowing green, the only sign that Fenton was not in control at the moment. The Centre director wondered if Phantom's possession of him would affect her results in any way. If it appeared so, she'd simply have to wait until he released the other Danny before trying again. She looked down at the keypad, and back at the screen, waiting for the right moment before selecting _Initiate_.

**0o0o**

"Ouch!" Danny flinched, instinctively twitching his arm in to his chest. He glanced at his wrist, or, more specifically, the Watch that was covering his wrist. Frowning at the slight digging sensation, he shook his arm out, steering around yet another door with his other hand, and half an eye on the Zone.

"What?" Martin sounded slightly exasperated this time, as he leaned into the front.

"Nothing," Danny said, "just…pinched my wrist or something."

"Are we there yet?"

Danny looked at the blinking red light that marked their destination, and then at the swirling green of the Ghost Zone. "Um…actually, yeah, I think so."

"Huh," Martin hopped awkwardly into the front seat, and turned to stare out the windshield, "Dark, creepy, ugly-looking floaty thing in the middle of nowhere? I'd say you're right."

Danny rolled his eyes even as he slowed the Speeder to a halt. "Martin, _every_ ghost lair in this place is a 'dark, creepy, ugly-looking floaty thing in the middle of nowhere.'" He let intangibility take him and slipped into the back seat, "Now get back here, there's some things you need to know about how to use Fenton weapons."

**0o0o**

Valerie actually sighed with relief as the FentonWorks' doorbell rang. She bounded up the steps from the lab and across the living room before Maddie had even stepped out of the kitchen.

"Don't worry, Mrs. F, I got this." Valerie called over her shoulder as she grasped the door handle. She yanked the door open and stepped back. Sam Manson stepped over the threshold, amethyst eyes quickly scanning for either of the Fenton parents.

"So what's wrong with D-"

Valerie shook her head, holding her hand up as if to place it over Sam's mouth.

"Kitchen," she said quietly, with a significant glance in that direction. Sam nodded.

"Valerie? Who was it, dear?" Maddie poked her head around the door, "Oh, Sam! How wonderful to see you! It's been so long!"

"Hey Mrs. Fenton," Sam said with a practiced smile, "Sorry this isn't purely social. Valerie said she needed help with a project or something?"

"Oh! Well, don't let me keep you. I'm making fudge for Jack anyway. Call me if you need anything, though! And you're welcome to stay for dinner!"

"Thanks."

"We'll be in the lab, Mrs. F," Valerie said, motioning for Sam to follow her as Maddie ducked back into the kitchen.

The two girls walked leisurely back downstairs, trying to seem like they really were just planning to do a school project. Once on the lab tiles however Sam rounded on the part-time ghost hunter,

"Where's Danny? What's going on?"

Valerie elected not to answer right away. She activated her hunting suit and jumped onto the glider, then she extended a hand to the Goth.

"I'll explain on the way?"

* * *

_**Does Maddie seem too out of character? Or anyone else for that matter?  
**_


	11. Actual Chapter 11!

This is _not_ how he would've wanted this fight to go down.

He'd been planning on sneaking around the tower, freeing prisoners until they found Diana (and then keep going, obviously), sneak her and the others out or at least to the Spectre Speeder if there weren't that many of them, and then come back for the ghost. Difficult, maybe, as several factors were playing around, here. But it was simple, if done right; and Danny had just grabbed Martin's wrist to turn the two invisible when the Boomerang imbedded itself in the asteroid, right next to his face.

Valerie! Of course it was Valerie. Of all the people if could be, it had to be Valerie. By asking her not to follow, he'd practically invited her along. But then Sam had stepped off the hover board behind her and he had kind of panicked.

He had, kind of, shouted her name which had, kind of, alerted the other ghost who had just returned through a self-made portal on the other side of the tower according to Martin and she had, kind of, attacked them. Him. She'd attacked _him_.

Danny ducked another giant fist, flipping back to beside one of the cages on the tower to shoot an ecto-blast at her. It didn't do much, didn't have the intended effect. Then again, Demeter –as she loudly proclaimed herself to be –was at least twice as tall as him and at least that much more well-built. Looping around a blue ball of energy, he was very glad that he had at least three people for back up.

0o0o

Valerie was pissed. Supremely so.

Not only was Danny Fenton not Danny Fenton, the imposter was possessed by Danny Phantom, had led them into being attacked by a giant ghost, had somehow shoved her into freeing panicking high school kids, _and_ had left her to with his annoying blonde sidekick. Seriously, one more _even vaguely_ flirty comment and she was locking him in the next empty cage and leaving him there.

Val unhooked a cord from the computer in the arm of her ghost hunting suit and jammed it into the locking console next to the glass door. Martin, using his fancy wrist watch, did the same on the next cell over. The group of teens inside her cage huddled as close to the door as they could, watching with hope in their slightly glowing eyes as she typed. She really hope the too-much-familiar glow was just a trick of the light.

"Y'know, for a ghost who keeps yelling about how technology and 'progress' are destroying the planet, she certainly has some impressive tech." Martin said, staring at the wrist inches from his face.

Valerie agreed. "And firewalls," she said, as she rapidly punched at the keys on her suit's built in keypad.

With a small _bleep_ the glass slid open and the teenagers spilled out. Valerie pointed them toward the Spectre Speeder, and moved on to the next cell.

0o0o

Sam was pissed. Immensely so.

Not only had Danny not told her that he was coming back to Amity Park, he had brought some sort of spy kid with him into the Ghost Zone, compromised his secret with Valerie, gave their position to the very angry, very big ghost that they were after, _and_ had neglected to tell her (or Tucker as far as she knew) that he _wasn't aging!_ As soon as they had this ghost locked up somewhere (she vaguely recalled the blonde kid shouting something about a Centre Containment Unit into his watch?), she and Danny were going to reintroduce her boot to his head.

The high tech ghost fighting suit that the Fenton's had been building off the designs from Valerie's was coming very much in handy. It was only half-built and what little worked was incredibly glitchy, but it helped. She could fly around with relative ease (no hover board, though) and pull weapons from seemingly non-existent pockets, but that was all she needed anyway.

She hefted the ecto-bazooka to her shoulder and aimed at the blue skinned ghost about to smash Danny into the wall.

"Ten points for me!" Direct hit. Sam grinned and cocked the gun again.

Demeter spun to face her, shot of a blue ecto-ball. Sam dove to the right as much as she could when floating with minimal control over her movements, and lined the bazooka up for another shot.

Danny beat her to it, icing over the ghosts hands before hitting her square in the back with a green energy beam.

Sam couldn't help but be a little amazed that he hadn't needed to switch to ghost mode yet. His control was getting better.

0o0o

Danny was dying.

Okay, so he wasn't _literally_ dying, but he hadn't used this much power in human form in…ever. And he'd already been tired coming to the Ghost Zone.

One week of school. That's all he'd wanted; one week* to live like a regular guy (who was, for some reason back in high school rather than college), to slow down in a new place, with no attachments, and sort his head out. And what does he get? Over-tiredness, secret agents, aliens, and a ghost who was kidnapping innocent people; honestly, it was like the universe was out to get him, or something.

Demeter, at least, was definitely out to get him. She was concentrated on attacking him. Sure, she'd go after Sam for a bit if Sam landed enough blows to be considered a threat, but she was completely ignoring Martin and Valerie. He hoped it was because she was focused and hadn't seen them, rather than there being s specific reason she was letting her prisoners go. Mind control, perhaps?

Danny clenched his teeth, forced another blast of ecto-energy through his human palm. The effort left his hand throbbing. Human tissue was less conductive to ectoplasm than it's ghostly counterpart; he desperately needed to go ghost, if he didn't want to be passing out imminently.

The situation, however, wasn't quite life-or-death enough for him to want Val or Martin to see, yet.

He met Sam's eyes over Demeter's shoulder, raised his eyebrows. She nodded back, squared her jaw and fired. Demeter shrieked, twisted. Strands of her hair were smoking as she screamed about useless humans and pains in the a-

Danny used the moment to look around, scan for any witnesses. There were a few teens from Martin's school but they looked so far out of it he doubted any of this was really registering to them. He tensed his shoulders and let the transformation rings burst to life around his waist. The cold, stark light spread to head and toe and Danny breathed a sigh of relief.

Only to hate himself for that the next second. Demeter's enormous hand grabbed him around the chest as Sam shouted his name in warning, and shoved him against the tower wall, hard. The breath was knocked out of him; Danny struggled to get a breath in. He couldn't help the sharp prick of panic at the base of his neck. Unless that was just a soon-to-be bruise. Either way…

Demeter's blue eyes met his, held them. They were close, too much so for his liking. He was still struggling to get a breath in.

"How many times have I said it," she asked, "and how many times have you listened?"

Danny frowned, finally managed to suck in a breath of impossible air. "What?" He coughed.

"_Hey!"_ Sam, it seemed, had traded her bazooka for a weapon with a much smaller blast radius. A still-pretty-sizable ecto-pistol was clenched in a white knuckled grip. "Get off him. Now!"

Demeter simply raised her free hand and shot off an ecto-beam. It his Sam dead centre on her chest, sent her spinning back.

"_Sam!"_

She didn't move, and Danny narrowed a fierce, green-eyed glare at the other ghost.

"No need for dramatics, Danny Phantom. Now," she twisted her free hand into his hair, let go with the other, "let's get this over with."

She dragged him up, towards the top of the tower. Danny yelped, scrabbled to grip her wrist, though he felt several clumps of snow white hair pull free before he got a good hold and managed to relieve some of the pressure.

At the very top of the tower was a single smaller cell, and on top of that, a long metallic pole collecting wisps of raw ectoplasm from the surrounding environment. The two gave the tower the impression of tapering to a point. The small cell's door was open.

"My first experiments failed. Rather miserably, too. It seems that living matter is much less adapting of the general ectoplasm than I had first anticipated. They got sick, wasted away, and finally…faded. But with you…"

Dangling by the hair, exhausted and mostly at the mercy of a giant ex-goddess at the heart of the Ghost Zone, Danny wondered, "Well what do you expect me to do? What experiments? I have to warn you, I almost failed science."

"Stupid boy!"

"That's what I'm saying! Why don't you just-"

Demeter grabbed him by the chest again, pulled back her arm and, in a throw any major league baseball pitcher would be proud of, hurled him into the cell. Danny crashed into the far wall, slid a few inches down, and then collapsed to his hands and knees at the bottom of the cell.

"You are the halfa! Half living, half dead? Half human and half ghost: a meeting point between two separate species, a transition, a catalyst!"

Danny stared at her, not 100% sure that he was hearing correctly. Demeter misinterpreted his expression and sighed.

"Your pet, Diana, is nearing the half-way point. She needs your ectoplasm, your particular ectoplasmic charge if she's going to survive. She asked me why I don't just kill the humans? Not everyone turns into a ghost, that's why! I can skip them the dying part, the choosing. I can purify my Earth."

Green eyes slid closed in time with the cell door.


	12. Chapter 12

_**Log on losers, we're gonna boldly go.**_

_**Guess whaaat~! **_

_**New chapter! **_

_**You have no idea how good this feels, to finish this (not the story, not yet), to just- ahh, it's great~! I'm so happy.**_

_**And special thanks to Ami Izune**_**__****. **You're awesome. Thank you so so much. 

* * *

Martin was staring up at the tower, his hands slack, mouth dropped open.

Valerie was about to reprimand him for not doing his job when there were civilians to save, when he pointed, turned to her and said, "Danny!"

Val looked up in time to see Demeter throw Phantom into a cell and slam the door down. She looked around for Sam and found her floating listlessly halfway to the Speeder. Several of the rescued teens were pulling her towards its shelter. Okay, so that left her and Martin to clean this mess up. By themselves. Him, with her. _Super._

She opened her mouth to explain her plan when an ominous hum from the tower derailed her thought train. The two ghost hunters shared a look.

"….Someone said it couldn't get any worse, didn't they?"

She was going to kill him._ One more comment, honestly…_

"_Martin!_" Faintly, over the whine of whatever machine was at the centre of the tower, Val made out a distinctly female voice screaming.

"Diana?!" Martin pushed off from the cell he'd been working on to float several levels up. "Diana! Are you okay?"

Valerie steered her hover board up after him.

"_No_ I am not _okay!_ Look at me!"

"Oh no." Valerie paled. Inside the cell were two girls, both looking rather green. Only, in the case of the brown haired one yelling at Martin, green was all too literal. Well, green-blue. And her legs were stuck together in a faint blue ghost tail. Both girls were glowing.

"She's turning them into ghosts!"

Martin whipped around to stare at her. "She's killing them?!"

"No, look." Valerie gestured to the cell at large, "She's converting their bodies directly into ectoplasm."

"You can _do_ that?" Martin turned his own shade of green.

"Oh, well that's all very fascinating, but could you _get us out of here already?!_"

The redhead was panicking. Valerie hated it when they panicked. Then again, not many people _wouldn't_ panic if they were being turned into a ghost. She would.

Martin attached the cable from his Watch to the door and then paused with his fingers over the controls.

"What? What is it? Martin?" Diana twitched worried eyes from the Watch to her brother.

Valerie did her best to look sympathetic. It wasn't that hard, considering the circumstances. She nodded at the agent when he glanced at her.

"We can't take you out, Diana." He said.

"What do you mean?" the redhead demanded, her eyes flashing in the dim light, "You can't just leave us in here?!"

Martin retracted the cable, fidgeted with the Watch. "We don't know exactly what this machine is doing, Jenny. For all we know, taking you out could kill you."

"But…what about everyone else? All those other guys you already saved, what about them?! You got _them_ out!"

Martin and Valerie exchanged a look.

"Some of them had glowing eyes," he said.

Great, so spy kid had noticed that too. Guess it wasn't just a trick of the light, then. Did that mean that all those kids were going to die? Should they put them back in the cells or would that just make things worse? How were they going to reverse any of this?

What was a turn-people-into-ghosts-machine (hereby dubbed Ghost Converter) going to do to Danny _Phantom?_ For crying out loud, he was _already_ a ghost!

"Where's Fenton?" she demanded instead.

Martin looked around and shrugged. He gestured to the few heads poking timidly up from behind the relative safety of the Spectre Speeder. "Over there?"

Valerie wasn't really comfortable asking Danny Fenton to join a ghost fight; especially if Fenton wasn't actually _Fenton_. Then again, she wasn't comfortable taking a seventeen year old into a ghost fight either…

"What's the plan?" Martin was studying her expression, what little of it he could see through her suit's red tinted visor.

"We need some way to contain this ghost once we weaken it. Usually we just shove them back into the 'Zone but since we're already _in_ the 'Zone and Pandora-"

"Demeter."

"Demeter, _whatever, _can make her own portals…"

The Fenton Crammer would have been nice to have. It could shrink ghosts down to several inches tall and had the bonus effect of shorting out their powers. Or a Thermos, one of those would be nice too. All she had on her were a bunch of ghost weapons and battery packs.

"Danny didn't happen to bring a Fenton Thermos, did he?"

Martin's brow furrowed, "Uhh…no? If he did I don't know- Oh." Martin had a brief vision of a pristine silver and green Thermos floating passed his feet, along with the door to the Speeder, while a giant dragon gripped him in its claws.

"'Oh' _what?"_

"Um, we…may have…lost it on the way here?"

Valerie didn't answer immediately, which was probably a good thing for the kid. Faintly, through the speaker in her suit, she heard Sam's groggy voice mumble her name. Val turned, and saw the other woman, still floating helplessly, clutching her head. She didn't appear to have noticed Demeter baring down on her.

"Well find _something! _Make a plan!' Valerie shouted behind her as she activated the hover board, hefted her bazooka back up, and flew off.

Martin blinked. "Oh sure. 'I'm the experience ghost hunter, I'll just leave the experienced _alien hunter_ to find a solution to our _ghost problem_!'"

He flipped through the U-Watch's gadget selection for anything useful. X-Rod, bungee, goggles, laser cutter, GPS…useless. Legendex…

He turned to Diana, "What do we know about Demeter?"

"Uh," Diana hesitated at the sudden question, "Nothing that will help you trap a ghost this powerful."

Powerful ghost, yeah, that was the problem. He glanced over. Valerie and Sam were firing at Demeter, keeping her away from the other teens; Sam still looked woozy, and held tight to Val's shoulder.

Static crackled in Martin's ear and he flinched, brought a hand up. Warm plastic under his fingers…the Fenton Phones.

"Spy kid, found your Thermos! Twelve o'clock! Top of the tower!" Valerie's shout didn't _quite _deafen him.

His eyes trailed up the tower of cells, zeroed in on the Thermos lazily spinning in place behind the tallest point of the construct. "Got it."

He ignored the frantic questions from Diana and Jenny and pushed upward. When he got close enough to the top he fiddled with the Watch. _"Turbo Bungee selected."_ Martin shot the tiny grappled into the side of an empty cell, and kicked off, hands outstretched, reaching for the Thermos. As soon as his fingers closed around the cool metal, he knew something was wrong.

The bungee stretched taut and Martin jerked, almost losing his grip on the Thermos. He reeled himself in. With both feet planted firmly on solid metal, the bungee still keeping him from floating off into the depths of the Ghost Zone, he examined the Thermos.

Silver, yes. Strip of green, yes, good. Dents?

Cautiously, he shook the thing.

"_Hey! Knock it off!"_

"Oh. It's you. Uh…hey, can multiple ghosts fit in the same Thermos?"

"…_Yes."_

Huh. Well…evil ghost says yes, battered old Thermos says no. Martin wasn't taking any chances. So. What to do now?

With a smile, Martin pressed at his Watch, "Billy! I need a portal to the Centre! Cell block E!"

"_Who's Billy? …You're not gonna shove him in here with me?"_

Martin ignored the voice, and jumped through the blue rectangle as it formed in front of him.

"Oof!" He landed in a belly-flop on the smooth floor of the Centre, and groaned. "…Thanks Billy."

Martin pushed to his feet, waved at several white-uniformed guards to follow him, and ran to the nearest empty cell. One of the guards typed in the code to unlock the door while Martin spoke into his U-Watch.

"Billy, I'm gonna need another portal right back to where you found me in a second. Ready?"

"_Just give the word, Marty."_

Martin stepped inside the cell, nodded at the guard to lock it behind him. When the energy field was up, Martin backed against the right side wall. "Ready?" he asked again. He wasn't sure who he was talking to.

"_What are you doing?"_ growled the ghost.

Martin didn't answer. He stole a breath, and then shook the Thermos as hard as he could. Then he ripped the cap off, and burst of sound and light flooded the chamber, blinding him.

"Now, Billy!" He heard the faint hum of a portal opening and then he was falling backwards.

The portal closed before he got more than a glimpse of white and black.

Martin clutched the empty, dented Thermos and looked around.

Billy's measurements were off; he was several feet behind and above the Spectre Speeder. Which was good; he didn't know how he'd be able to sneak around the giant ghost without being toasted.

Speaking of giant ghost, Demeter was toying with Sam and Valerie now, smiling as she launched flaming balls of ectoplasm at them. Well, Martin could even the playing field then.

He pushed off from a tiny floating rock and grabbed for the nearest arm.

The arm's owner jerked, and raised a fist, ready to swing, and then froze. "Martin?!"

"Jared! Good. I need you and everyone else to help me."

"Help? With what? What's even going on?"

"Uh…I'll explain later. Right now, let's go with 'mass hallucination.'"

"…Okay."

"Now," Martin shoved his way into the Speeder, pulled open a cupboard in the wall, "I need everyone to take a gun, and fire at the giant blue glowing lady."

He grabbed a gun out and offered it to one of his classmates. He was met with dozens of staring eyes. Martin rolled his own, "Just do it!"

Everyone took an ecto-weapon.

"And try not to the hit the two on our side?"

He tightened his grip on the Thermos, and leaned over the top of the Speeder with the other teens. "Ready?"

A few scattered nods, and the uniform sound of a dozen weapons charging.

"Fire!"

Valerie heard him shout, which was what he'd kind of hoped for, and steered her and Sam out of the way. Demeter wasn't so lucky. She screamed.

The students kept up a good barrage of shots until Valerie suddenly appeared beside Jared and gently put a hand on his wrist. Slowly, the firing trailed off.

Demeter remained floating upright, and she glared across the small space between her and the humans. A weak ecto-blast formed in her hand. Sam fired one last shot, and the blast petered out.

"Val?" Martin smiled, waving the Thermos at the older huntress.

She grinned back, and Sam hopped off to collect up guns and to make the room for Martin on the hover board.

"Uh…This but-?"

"This one." Valerie said, and Demeter was gone in a swirl of blue-white light.

* * *

**_Welp. That's all for now. Peace off.  
_**


	13. Chapter 13

**_Six months? Uhm..._**

* * *

"Danny? Hey, can you hear me?"

The voice was muffled through the glass, the outline at the window foggy in the dim light, his head was pounding –Danny couldn't make out who was talking to him. Slowly, painfully, he maneuvered himself in the cramped space to sit upright, and blinked hard at the window.

"You awake now?"

"…I guess," he mumbled. "What's up?"

"Oh, nothing, just that we defeated the crazy giant ghost, locked everyone up again, and uh, can't get you out of there."

"What?" Danny struggled to his feet. He hissed and lightly fingered around the bruise at the back of his skull. "Sam. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," the woman replied. "Got a nice little cat nap and a concussion or something but I'm better off than you. How's your head?"

"Sting-y. Now what was that about me staying in here? Can't '_get' _me out or won't '_let'_ me out?"

"Mmm…both. We got Demeter away and then some neat little not-ghost-portal opened up and all these dudes in white uniforms –_who aren't the GIW by the way _–came through, took the Thermos away with Valerie, and started running tests on this thingy you're in."

Danny just blinked and gestured for her to go on.

"So we can't let you out. This machine has been converting living flesh into ectoplasm, and psycho-goddess thought that she could use the brilliant genetics of mister half-ghost to make sure nobody died in the process. Now the Centre, the dudes and ladies in white, want to use you to reverse the process and turn everyone back without poisoning or seriously messing anyone up."

"…Wow. Okay. That's, uh…"

"Intense?" Sam leaned against the window, arms crossed.

"Yeah."

They held out for a few minutes until the companionable silence turned abruptly awkward.

"I was going to tell you-"

"Is this why you stopped calling?"

They stared for a moment. Sam's face went from mildly surprised at having spoken in sync to what Danny had quickly learned at fourteen was the 'do go on but if you wish to live make it good' face.

"I'm not aging!" he blurted. "I mean I thought I was but I'm not, look at me! My ghost side is doing things to me, Sam! I panicked. I went to Canada for goodness' sake. Canada! Who does that?!"

"And you didn't called me? Or Tucker? Ooh, if you called Tucker but you didn't call me, I swear Danny Fenton; you won't have to worry about being immortal much longer."

"No, I didn't call anyone. Okay, maybe I dropped in on Clockwork to see if there was anything huge going to happen in Amity Park soon and if it would be okay to leave, but honestly I didn't even tell Jazz!"

"And you thought, what, that _Canada_ was going to magically solve your problem? Let me guess, your logic had something to do with thriller movies."

Danny was rather glad he had a wall of Plexiglas between him and his best friend, "Um…no?"

"Idiot. You know what? If wanted to be alone and sulk about your personal ghost problems, I think I'll just go find Valerie. The agents said this conversion thing would only be a few hours. Have fun."

0o0o

It did take a few hours. Almost an entire day, actually. At one point, Danny had gotten so sick of the nothing, he'd attempted to use the Watch he'd all but forgotten he had to break out. It had sparked to life and glowed at him for several seconds before dying. It was rather ironic and not very nice at all. He wondered if MOM had given him a faulty Watch on purpose or if it was the clash of Centre tech versus Ghost Converter that had it quit.

Sometime several hours after the Watch failed, an agent dressed in white, wearing a hat with one of those eye logos he'd seen in his brief trip through the Centre, appeared at his window to tell him that everything was almost done. Danny let the ectoball he'd been aimlessly tossing around fade out of existence, and nearly cried with relief.

0o0o

Standing in MOM's office, he almost wished he was back in the cage. The Fright Knight could take a lesson or two from this woman on how to terrify people. She loomed over the five of them –two paranormal investigators and three ghost hunters –and gave them each in turn a stare so cold Danny felt his ice core twitch a little in recognition. She'd gone over the agent's mission from the beginning, tone appropriately sorrowful when she mentioned the loss of the workers from Parc la Fonatine, congratulatory as spoke about finding Mr. Angerson and the students on Torrington in time, and downright scary as detailed everywhere they'd gone wrong. Danny wasn't surprised to find that trusting him was one of the bullet points in the woman's list.

Then she'd dismissed the agents, Martin and Diana giving the ghost hunters nervous looks before the elevator doors closed in front of them, and Danny, Sam, and Valerie were left alone with the Centre's director.

"So what do I do with you three?"

"Ma'am? Where's Fenton, shouldn't he be here too? He's not in the infirmary is he?" Valerie hadn't seen him there when they checked her over, though she had passed that hysterical, redheaded cagemate of Diana's. Maybe she'd just missed him. If he was floating helplessly somewhere in the Ghost Zone, it was going to take more than a building full of alien secret agents to keep her from saving him.

MOM stared at Danny Phantom instead of replying. Just when Valerie was about to say screw it to diplomacy and demand an answer, the ghost beside her spoke.

"Sam knows. Nobody else. Not even my parents." Jazz knew, and Tucker knew but if he could keep this super alien spy lady from turning her attention to his sister and his other best friend, he was going to do exactly that.

Valerie frowned, confused. MOM raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, come on, you might as well tell her, Danny. You need all the allies you can get and Val's awesome. Not to mention none of us are fourteen any more, I doubt her grudge is still that strong, right?" Sam nudged Valerie in the ribs, but the ghost hunter didn't know how to respond. "She should know."

"Know what?" She was getting tired of being the only one in the room to not know what everyone else was dancing around. She rounded on the ghost, "Tell me."

"And show me," MOM all but commanded.

Well, Danny couldn't argue with that. Well, he could, but he figured that not resisting would turn out to be better than not. They were mature, not-really-but-kind-of adults now. If Val couldn't handle knowing who he was, well hey, Martin had mentioned memory erasing, right? And if he couldn't trust the woman who ran an interstellar detective and protective service, who employed countless being who weren't human, who could he trust?

"Don't be a baby," Sam whispered at him.

Danny huffed at her, but squinted his eyes and let the transformation rings form at his waist. Up and down they converted ectoplasm to flesh and left Danny Fenton standing in Phantom's place. He tensed for Valerie's reaction.

"You-? Danny? What?" Her red-gloved hand dropped to the ectogun in the holster on her hip.

"Please don't kill me," he breathed.

"Ms. Grey, I suggest you think carefully about your next actions. Due to your involvement in this case, your previous ghost hunting experience, and your newfound knowledge of this organization it would be regrettable if we had to wipe your memory of this entire episode. You would make an excellent agent, and I would hate to have that done to you."

Valerie, floored, just flit her gaze between director and not-quite-ghost, before finally looking to Sam for help. The other just gave a huge shrug, daring Valerie to make the wrong choice.

The huntress could stay and learn to work through years of hating one of her worst enemies /close friends but also become a secret agent in a workplace full of _aliens_. Or she could choose to forget this whole thing, go back to protecting Amity Park with the Fenton parents and forget that her friends had lied to her for years and let her mercilessly hunt one of them down time after time. Huh.

"Do I have to choose now?"

MOM tapped something out on the computer built into her desk without looking, holding Valerie's eyes. "No. This is your decision to make; I will let you make it freely. However, should you mention any of this to anyone outside this room or this station; we will take that choice from you and erase your memory along with that of your confidante."

"Thanks…I guess." Valerie sank into the chair MOM had offered several minutes ago when she'd called them in but which everyone had refused.

Sam however, bounced on her toes. "Do we get to be secret agents too?"

MOM ignored her. "Mr. Fenton, if you could return your U-Watch?"

Danny glanced worriedly at Sam, but slipped the device off his wrist and placed it on the desk in front of him. "Um, so it's broken, but _I swear_ I didn't do that!"

"No, I did. Ms. Manson, if I hadn't considered you for this job I wouldn't have you in this room. The two of you and Ms. Grey, should she accept, will begin training next week. Please note, however, that failure to pass the qualification exam will result in the termination of all memories relating to the Centre."

"Big fan of erasing minds, aren't you?" Sam muttered.

"Now, Mr. Fenton, about your other problem…" MOM picked up the U-Watch and fiddled with the strap. Shen pulled a connection cable out of the side and plugged it into her desk. Holographic screens flickered into view, crosshatched with graphs, charts, and all manner of squiggly lines that Danny couldn't make sense out of looking at backwards. "I think you're overreacting."

"Overreacting? Are you kidding? I'm not aging! I look practically prepubescent! Even Valerie looks ancient compared to me- Ow!" Danny grabbed his arm, rubbed soothing circles around what was sure to be a decent sized bruise in a few hours. He glared at the ghost hunter and she glared right back.

"Danny, consider this: you were fourteen when you died."

The half-ghost flinched. Not only because of the reminder, but because he'd realized something. Clueless, as his friends would often say. He'd called Valerie ancient…what did that mean for MOM? Actually, what _did _that mean for MOM? She _could_ be ancient, for all he knew. After all, no one had ever explicitly stated that this woman was human, right? There were probably plenty of aliens in the galaxy that looked human. Even if she was human, who's to say she wasn't human-with-a-few-perks? But he was getting off-topic. A reveal, a job offer, and now whatever this was?

"And you're twenty-one now. That's only a seven year difference."

"Yeah," he argued, floating into the air a few inches with indignation and throwing his arms out, "but Valerie and Sam-"

"And in that seven year gap, you've aged three years." MOM paused to let him consider this. "You haven't stopped aging, you've just slowed down. We'll have to run more tests and see how time progresses but if this pattern holds you will have only double the normal human lifespan."

Danny's eyes were wide. He glanced at Sam, uncharacteristically sullen, sitting next to him. "Oh," he said, "only double. Great."

Sam and Valerie simply stared.

"Considering the other option was immortality, Mr. Fenton, I would take what you got and be grateful. Now if you don't mind, I have a very important meeting with a very impatient interstellar minister so would you kindly get out of my office?"

It wasn't a request.

The three fled.

They had some things to think over.

* * *

**_End? Is that a good place to leave off? Probably not. Up for an epilogue and a half?_**

**_So, don't forget to let me know how disappointed you are._**

**_*dies*_**


	14. Epilogue-y Thing

_**Whaat? Not even an hour later? It's like you've had this saved on your computer for months or something! Or you're just really trying to avoid studying. Or both.**_

_**Bleh.**_

* * *

Epilogue

It had been three days since the thing with Demeter and the job offer from MOM. In that time, Danny had learned that, not only was he probably not immortal (three cheers), but Valerie was coming to terms with his being half-ghost and had agreed to join the Centre with him and Sam, Sam wanted to try going on a date (as weird as it could possibly look but hey, another three cheers), and also that Martin had dumped Danny's evil alternate future self into a Centre cell in order to make room in the Thermos for Demeter (one very unenthusiastic, and highly sarcastic cheer).

Danny limped along the darkened hallway rather more slowly than he could have gone. It wasn't the pain in his ankle or the bulky cast (courtesy of secret agent training) that dragged at his feet like a magnet to the metal floor, rather the reluctance came from his destination. He supposed he could have flown, but the physical act of putting solid feet onto the floor and lifting material legs helped (forgive the pun) to ground him.

He wasn't as afraid of this meeting as much as he would have been seven years ago, considering he'd been living with the guy for the last two. But he was still apprehensive about it. And weary. And any number of synonyms along those lines. He would've thought something along the lines of _'a least the alarm signalling his escape hasn't gone off yet'_ if he hadn't had extensive practice in keeping those thoughts subconscious after years of dealing with the likes of Desiree and all manner of psychic ghosts.

He passed plenty of weird looking creatures in their cells as he limped to the end of the hall, but he only paused to examine one. A basketball sized globe hung suspended in midair, a modified containment unit like the Thermos, only prettier and infinitely less portable. One of the aliens in R&D had volunteered it to hold Demeter until the Fentons were done with a new Thermos. A real-world test in a safety-ensured environment, he'd called it.

Danny took a moment to make sure it was holding, and then continued down the hallway.

The cell was silent as he approached, and empty as he looked in. But he didn't panic. Not yet, anyway. His evil self was a ghost and invisibility came expected. Plus, there hadn't been an alarm (don't think 'yet,'). Plenty of the cells in the Centre appeared empty at first glance. Luckily, MOM or some other brilliant individual had decided that vacant-looking cells that were not altogether vacant was kind of a dangerous phenomenon in their line of work, and had installed a number of different settings into the walls of the cages to read different visual spectrums; infrared being the one that Danny used now.

A huddled form in varying shades of blue and green appeared near the back of the cell. Near as Danny could tell, the other ghost was leaning back, arms crossed, maybe sleeping, more likely sizing him up.

For a while, neither of them said anything. Then Dan spoke (okiedokie, not asleep), "Pretty risky move, dumping me in here. Did you even know if the walls were phase proof? Or did the idiot Danny leap before looking?"

"…It was an educated guess," Danny said, "One I didn't consider too horrible seeing as MOM threatened to lock me in one these before when she knew full well what I could do."

"Did she now? Didn't figure _Maddie_ as one to join the alien hunting business." Dan sat up and faded into normal view. Danny turned off the infrared. Cold eyes bored into his.

Danny closed heavy lids over blue irises. "Not that MOM. It's em-oh-em. Stands for…something."

"Oh, _well done_ there, Sherlock."

"Shut up. I only came to tell you not to get used to the luxury suite. Mom and Dad are almost done building a stronger Thermos, and then you're going back inside."

Tense silence, and then a mocking, "_Mom_ or Em-oh-em?"

Danny chose not to dignify that with a response. He walked away, dragging his leg behind him.

He and Sam had a double date with Martin and his fish-lady girlfriend-hopeful at some space restaurant MOM had recommended. He didn't want to keep them waiting. Especially not for the likes of _him._

"An educated guess," came the unheard whisper from the dark, "is still just a guess."

the end

* * *

_**Well, it **_**might_ be the end. I've made an educated guess._**


End file.
